


Death Waits

by TheHufflebean (SevralShips)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bring Back Black Challenge, Grief, I had to write a wish fulfillment Sirius comes back fic, M/M, Past Relationship(s), So much angst, Tonks is dead RIP, age difference in a wayyy, past remadora, past wolfstar - Freeform, puppylove, rekindling old flame, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 19:41:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16001945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevralShips/pseuds/TheHufflebean
Summary: Sirius emerges from the veil ten years after the events of OotP to a war that has ended and a world where much has changed. But some things may have endured. [Title taken from the Bowie song 'My Death'.]





	1. Chapter 1

### Sirius

I knew I was headed in the right direction because of the warmth. Well, not _warmth_ , per se, but the absence of cold. After years of that unspeakable, bone-screaming, Dementor _bloody_ cold, I reckoned a frozen tundra might’ve felt balmy. I trusted Padfoot’s instincts and remarkable nose to steer me in the right direction, he’d never steered me wrong. _If anything,_ the thought came bitterly but inevitably, _I’ve steered him wrong._

The passage was tight and dark. The word _dark_ didn’t fairly encompass it, in truth. It was dark beyond dark, not so much absence of light as absence of sight. As Padfoot led me towards the warmth-that-wasn’t-warmth-per-se, I tried to feel the damp stone beneath my paws, hear the moans of the poor bastards trapped in here with me, tried to smell the stench of death and waste or the nose-stinging salt of the sea. All of them eluded me and I felt a bubble of panic swelling in my chest. Far better men than me had lost their bloody minds within Azkaban’s walls, what the hell made me any different? A small voice inside me wanted to protest that a few years in Azkaban wasn’t enough to break the mind of a _Black_ , and the thought brought a snorting estimation of a laugh from Padfoot’s snout. _A chipped teacup is enough to break the mind of a Black._ I’d damn near seen it happen growing up, that infamous unhinged streak so close to the surface, so tangled with the quick, righteous Pureblood temper.

Padfoot hesitated briefly at the sound. The first sound, voices far too muffled to be decipherable, even with canine hearing. There shouldn’t be talking, should there? There should be dark, damp, unforgiving rock for ages, followed by dark, damp, unforgiving sea for ages. I hardly knew how I’d survived the swim the first time, even if I had gone mad, I couldn’t have gotten that wrong. Could I? I crept on, focusing on the feeling of smooth stone my paws were beginning to detect, the whisper of fabric against my fur. Something was _wrong_. And not wrong in the usual Azkaban sense of endless night and misery and all that rubbish, wrong in the Sirius-get-a-hold-of-yourself-have-you-lost-your-blasted-mind.

The first time, I’d thought. How had I survived the swim _the first time._ Had they thrown me back in Azkaban? I couldn’t have forgotten that, could I? I didn’t remember a trial, but would there have been one? I tried to remember, tuning out the voices that were growing nearer, flashes of memory jumbled and incongruous in the darkness. A fourteen-year-old Regulus, his face closed to me, his eyes blazing. The decadent purr of my motorbike. James pacing our dorm, concocting a prank, the words babbling out of him manically. Harry in my cave by Hogsmeade, indignant about the Ministry’s inaction. Not unlike James, not unlike Regulus, even, or myself, that searing teenage anger. He looked strikingly like James, but as Remus had pointed out, he rather took after Lily in temperament.

Remus. My paws halted as the jumble in my head grew louder. Remus at twenty-one, when I didn’t know if I could trust him, didn’t know if I could trust my own shadow. Remus at eleven, all narrow shoulders and stutters and scars. Remus in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, pressing me to the wall and kissing me as feverish as a schoolboy. Remus screaming in the Shrieking Shack, his teenage body tearing and making way for the wolf. Remus hating me, Remus forgiving me, Remus embracing me.

I couldn’t be in Azkaban, Remus never would have let that happen. _He must be wondering where I’ve gotten off to,_ I realized, as if it were merely a matter of being out past curfew at Hogwarts. Was it? The more I remembered, the less I understood. Whether this was Azkaban or not, the dark was doing the same job, doing what darkness did, stealing sense and scope from men’s minds. _I have to get out of here, wherever_ here _is,_ my paws faster and surer beneath me, _I need to get back to Moony._

With each stride, it seemed my senses grew more acute, like waking after taking Dreamless Sleep. The floor was smooth stone, maybe marble, and breath-light fabric fluttered around me. I could smell men and women, could sense the tingle of old magic, the crackle of Dark Magic. I was nearly able to understand the conversations ahead of me, stray words leaking to me. I could still see only darkness.

And then, suddenly, there was light. It was like emerging from water, surrounded suddenly by light and movement. I froze, taking stock of my surroundings. I knew it at once as the Ministry, though it wasn’t a department I’d ever had reason to frequent. Familiar, though. The men and women I’d heard were in Ministry robes, though they wore an emblem I didn’t know. Some were engaged in rigorous spellwork, sweat beading on their brows, while others were manually fitting bricks into a wall, shimmering with new magic. None of them were looking in my direction, so I took a moment to listen, impatient for clues.

“...almost done,” one man was saying, “This here’s the last department.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly a priority,” the witch beside him said, “Anyway, it’s about bloody time things got back to normal.”

“Cheers to that,” the man said, a bit grimly, “I’ve half a mind to retire.”

“No one would blame you, Carroll,” the witch said, her voice softening slightly, “You rebuilt half the Ministry yourself, no one would…”

I knew if I stayed, I might have learned more but the longer I lingered, the more likely I’d be noticed. I suppose black fur didn’t much stand out against the darkly fluttering veil, but I was restless. The Ministry was being rebuilt for some reason, had been for a while by the sounds of it, and I was missing something crucial. The last I recalled, Voldemort had been rapidly on the rise, gathering his forces, his very existence denied by the Ministry. Had he won the Ministry? Were they rebuilding it to serve his purposes? Had he defeated Harry? I slipped carefully from shadow to shadow, aided by canine instinct and years of sneaking experience. If I could only remember why I’d been in this part of the Ministry before, why Harry had been here, maybe it would all begin to make sense.

It must have taken near an hour to reach street level, slipping out amidst a gaggle of foreign delegates. It was cold outside, patches of ice under-paw on the sidewalk as I slinked into the shadow of an alley. The fresh air was a relief and I panted it in deep lungfuls, even though it made Padfoot’s chest ache. The sun was already mostly set, one of those short midwinter days when it feels like there are only a few hours of daylight altogether. I turned my snout to the sky, hoping to bask for a second in my newly-reclaimed freedom, but I froze. Although the sky was not yet completely dark, it was impossible to miss the moon. It wasn’t full, I noted with relief, but near to it. A gibbous waxing so near to full that only someone who’d spent half their life minding the cycles of the moon would have told the difference so easily.

It would be full the following night, but by that time Moony would have Padfoot to pass the night with.

 

### Remus

I took my last sip of tea as the light through the kitchen window began to yellow as the sun neared the horizon, “I best be on my way, Andromeda,” I said reluctantly, placing the empty cup back in its saucer, “Thank you again--”

“Daaad, do you have to go?” Teddy whined from where he sat on his grandmother’s knee. He was getting a little old for it, both the knee-sitting and the whining, but it was a bit of a ritual. His stubbornness required him to ask, even though he knew the answer was the same every month. We humored it, and pretended as if we didn’t find it endearing

“You know I do, son,” I said, reaching over to tousle his mop of lilac hair as I stood, feeling the moon-pull deep in my aching bones, “I’ll come back home as soon as I can,” my eyes flicked back to Andromeda, “Shouldn’t be away more than a couple days.”

She smiled at me warmly, even if it didn’t quite thaw her eyes. She’d lost too much, “Don’t worry about us, Remus,” she gave her grandson a squeeze, “Harm won’t come to a hair on his head, though I can’t vouch for what color they’ll be.”

She made the same joke every month, and it hadn’t been that funny to begin with, but I smiled gratefully. A bad joke a month was a small price to pay to protect Teddy, and Andromeda was as much my family as his at this point. If Tonks could see it, she’d hardly believe it. I shot another apologetic smile back at my son before making my way towards the parlor. As I reached the door, his voice stopped me, “Dad!” he called, and I looked back at him over my shoulder, “Tell the wolf be nice to you.”

I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. It still surprised me sometimes what a good lad he was. He had all my curiosity, but his eyes had that perceptive glint that was all his mother. I nodded, “I’ll tell him.” I promised before turning back to the parlor. That one was new, although he’d had a sketchy understanding of the situation for years now. I’d taken my Wolfsbane every day for the past six days and with the last dose tomorrow, it should ensure that the wolf behaved as nicely as was anatomically possible, so he would be as ‘nice’ as one could expect.

I’d been reluctant to accept Hermione’s offers to make my monthly potion after the war, but even when I’d gotten her to accept my refusals, I’d still wake up to find a cauldron of the substance a week before full moon more months than not. We’d grown rather closer in the years since the war. At first I’d been resistant, getting the impression that she pitied me, but especially once she’d gotten her position in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, I’d become her unofficial (and anonymous) consultant on werewolf legislation and the friendship soon followed. It was terribly slow going and arduous but I was deeply proud of the work she was doing to not only de-criminalize lycanthropy, but to de-stigmatize it.

I grabbed a handful of floo powder from the milk glass bowl on the mantle, but hesitated before throwing it in the fire. I wished I could stay. Under the influence of my potion, I’d be no danger to them, but the transformation was frightening all the same. The thought of Teddy shrinking from me in fear turned my stomach. It was through gritted teeth that I said, “Twelve Grimmauld Place.” and stepped into the green flames.

All it took was emerging into the ostentatious drawing room of Grimmauld Place to second guess my choice, just as it did every month. I hated this place, but I needed it too. The gaslights sprang to life, casting sickening shadows on the rows of mounted house elf heads along the wall. Hermione had, of course, tried to take them down, but whatever held them up was some dark twist on a Permanent Sticking Charm. They weren’t coming down, and trying just gave one’s wand-hand nasty boils. I could claim that I came here out of convenience, as I’d explained to Andromeda, an empty house to transform in where I could not frighten or endanger anyone, but that wasn’t why I needed it. But how could I tell her, the woman whose daughter had _died_ for my sake, that I needed Grimmauld Place because of him?

It was foolish in a way, I knew that. As I looked around at all the dark wood, menacing artifacts, disapproving portraits of Blacks of old, I could feel his hatred for this place as surely as I could feel the tug of the moon on my bones. He had been miserable here, growing up, of course, but perhaps moreso when he found himself here again with the Order. Walking from the drawing room, I stopped for a moment in front of the vast and gaudy Black family tree, my fingers ghosting across the scorch mark where his name had once been. _Sirius Orion Black._

I could remember his blustering, righteous, rage-soured-relief as he regaled the Marauders with the tale of his disinheritance. They’d been threatening it for so long, he’d only half-believed they’d ever actually disown him. I hadn’t been surprised when the rejection stung him. He had been.

That version of Sirius, sixteen years old and all fiery rebellion, was still alive here, in a way. The others, Harry in particular, of course, had mourned him. But they’d never known Sirius, _the Marauder_. Sirius, the black sheep of the Black clan. Sirius of aristocratic profile and hot, inexperienced lips and a laugh that always sounded surprised. Only I remembered him. Only I missed him. Only I had loved him.

At Andromeda’s, I mourned Tonks. At Grimmauld Place, I mourned Sirius. There wasn’t room for all that regret under one roof. They had both loved me, in spite of the wolf, and they had both died. At the hands of the same witch, no less. My eyes travelled across the twining branches of the family tree to the name Bellatrix Black. I half expected my gaze to be enough to scorch her name from the tapestry, but it never was. It didn’t matter anyway, I reminded myself, she’d been dead eight years.

I turned away from the tapestry to go into the kitchen, where more memories hibernated, when I heard the front door click behind me. Grimmauld Place was one of the most thoroughly glamoured and warded places in all of Britain, first by the Blacks and then by Dumbledore. There was a rather short list of people who’d be able to just open the door without being blasted by some booby trap or setting off an alarm. _Hermione, most likely,_ I thought, _come to make sure I’ve taken my potion and haven’t slit my wrists, no doubt._ She was the most perceptive of Harry’s cohorts, by leaps and bounds, but I didn’t feel up to her well-meaning intrusion. It would interfere with the sullen reminiscence I had planned for tonight, “Listen, Hermio--”

My voice died in my throat as I turned, my eyes finding Sirius at the foot of the stair. He closed the door with his hip and looked up, giving me a tremulous smirk, “Hullo, Moony.”

  
  


### Sirius

Moony looked old. Well, not _old_ , not wizened and Dumbledore-y but older than he should. It did nothing to dull his good looks, in my opinion. On the contrary, I thought the pewter grey and white that had invaded most of his brown hair only made it so he had finally grown into the ‘kindly and dignified professor’ persona he’d been aspiring to since he was eleven. There were new lines at the corners of his eyes, but some of his scars looked faded and he seemed not to be shrinking too much under the pain of his looming transformation. He’d always feared that it would grow harder to bear with age. He was staring at me slack-jawed, his brows knitting together as though he were trying to make sense of a rather difficult Arithmancy assignment. He seemed to notice his mouth was open and closed it, before saying, skeptically, “Sirius?”

His tone answered a question that had been niggling in my thoughts as I made my way here. I remembered snatches of the confrontation at the Ministry, remembered Harry’s eyes full of relief at the sight of me, remembered Bellatrix’s crazed laughter. _Oh, Moony,_ I studied his carefully composed expression, _You thought I was dead_. I didn’t know how long I’d been gone, but his hair was grey and his eyes wary, “Moony, old chap, you look like you’ve seen a Grim.” I tried to smile, hoping it was reassuring and not predatory. I’d had a hard time controlling the distinction between the two since Azkaban.

His lips twitched with a smile but his face remained closed. He shook his head, “Just a ghost.” he corrected.

“I’m not a ghost,” I said, as earnestly as I could, “I promise.”

I took a step onto the first stair but he had his wand out and trained on my chest in an instant, “Don’t come any closer.”

A twinge of pain squeezed my core at his distrust. I flinched, and he saw me flinch. I put up both hands, “Yes, sir, Moony, sir.” I said, hoping that hearing me joke as I always had might set him at ease. His face remained unreadable.

“Do you have a wand?” He asked. I nodded and he held out his hand, “Give it here, then.” I blinked at him and he rolled his eyes, the first glimpse of my Moony, “C’mon, then. If you’re really you, I’ll give it back.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, reluctantly taking my wand from my pocket and putting it in his outstretched hand. I wanted nothing more than to feel his hand in mine, suck his fingertips, kiss his palm… but he was jumpy, and I dared not, “Can’t be too sure with the war on ‘n’ all that.”

Remus hesitated before his fingers closed around my wand, long, familiar fingers with neat nails and a permanent bump and inkstain on the ring finger from holding a quill. I pulled my eyes from his hands and forced them back to his face, our eyes locking. His usually brown eyes had taken on that golden honey hue they always had around the full moon, the wolf nearing the surface of his nature more. I was surprised he’d been standing so long the night before the moon, “The war’s over.” he said, after a long beat.

It was my jaw that dropped this time, “But, no, but that’s… bollocks! The war’s only just gotten started!”

“Well, no need to sound so disappointed.” Remus said, dryly. The words were suspicious but I thought I could see the doubt lifting.

“Oh, sod off,” I replied, “I’m not disappointed. I’m…” my shoulders sagged as my mind struggled to make sense of the situation, “ _Confused._ ”

He studied for a long moment and then said, “C’mon, then, it’s too long a story to tell without tea.” It was the first truly Moony-ish thing he’d said so far.

He led me into Grimmauld Place’s loathsome, familiar kitchen. I glanced at the wall by the table and mused that the kisses the two of us had traded against that wall might be the only good thing that had ever happened in this room. I made sure to sit with my back to that wall, I couldn’t risk the tenuous trust I was trying to earn back, and Merlin only knew how my face would betray me if I kept on down that line of thought. I watched as Remus slipped my wand into the pocket of the worn brown corduroys he wore, filling and heating the kettle with a few sound taps of his own. There was a clean mug (an unsightly thing bearing the Black family crest) dry on the rack along with a very small assortment of dishes. He opened the cabinet by the sink, and closed it, the one above the stove, and closed it, “They’re over there.” I said, pointing to the cabinet by the rubbish bin.

He fetched an identical mug from the cabinet and gave it a quick _scourgify_ before filling them both and setting them on the table, “I don’t usually have the need of two.” He explained, with that knack he had for saying sad things as though they weren’t. Before sitting, he fetched a small pitcher of milk and the sugar bowl from the counter and placed them in front of me. I raised an eyebrow at him when he made no move to claim a cup, “Mix my tea.” he said, flatly.

I couldn’t help grinning at him. _Sly wolf,_ I thought, _good thing I’m really me._ I pulled one of the mugs towards me, taking the teaspoon from the saucer and filling it exactly three times from sugar bowl and mixing it, before sliding it across the table to Moony, “ ‘No such thing as too much, Padfoot, and I’d thank you to kindly keep your judgment to yourself’,” I said, in an approximation of something he’d said to me on many occasions over the years, and added, “And no milk, unless you’re recovering from a tough moon.”

Moony didn’t manage to resist smiling back at me this time and my heart leapt in my chest. When he smiled he didn’t look old, or tired, or distrusting. He just looked like my Moony. He might’ve been fifteen and pleased that I’d sorted some riddle that had stumped the Marauders. He gingerly added a teaspoon of milk and a teaspoon of sugar to the other mug and pushed it to me, “Just so.” I approved and his smile broadened for a bit before fading with a flash of what looked like guilt.

“Merlin, you really are you, aren’t you?” he said, and I made sure my face didn’t show how much the disappointment in his voice stung me.

I took a sip of my tea, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, love.”

I noticed how he bristled under the familiar tone and the term of endearment. He folded his hands carefully on the table and pinned me with his sternest look, reminding me that, however briefly ‘professor’ had been more than an aspiration, “Tell me how you’re here, as well as you can.”

  
  


### Remus

I wondered if this might be proof that I’d finally lost my grip on reality. It was bound to happen sooner or later, I supposed. Sirius sat across from me, his elegant fingers fiddling nervously with the mug before him. He didn’t look a day over thirty-six, as if a decade hadn’t touched him. It wasn’t just that he didn’t appear to have aged, it was as though he had spun some Time Turner a few billion times and come to Grimmauld Place straight from that horrid day in the Department of Mysteries. He wore the same muggle jeans and black robes, the shabby brown button-down beneath that was _mine_ , that he’d grabbed from my hamper of (dirty) laundry when we left in a hurry that night. I’d forgotten that detail until now, seeing it again. The matter of his wardrobe choice had been a bit overshadowed by the matter of his death.

....which apparently was impermanent? From the story he was reaching the end of, it seemed like he’d entered some kind of stasis upon falling through the veil. All I could seem to think was how vindicated Harry was going to feel, having been the one who insisted Sirius’ death wasn’t permanent until well after everyone else had accepted it. Sirius took another sip of tea before concluding, “And once I was confident I could change from Padfoot and apparate, I came straight here,” he looked around and pursed his lips, “I wasn’t expecting it to be so…” he looked around, “Empty? The last time I was here,” _you were scrambling out of my bed to go save your godson,_ “The place was overflowing with Order members.”

I shrugged, my eyes tracing the line of his jaw as he looked around the empty house, “There isn’t much of an Order anymore.”

If he’d been in dog form, his ears would have flattened and his fur bristled, as if bracing for impact, “They’re not… Harry’s not…” his voice lowered, “Dead?”

I hesitantly shook my head, “Harry’s fine,” I said, delicately, “Out of school and doing well for himself.” I watched him mentally add a few years to the date he was no doubt trying to calculate, “But…” I felt a fist squeeze around my heart at the memory of Tonks’ body in the Great Hall, her face seeming younger and all wrong without her lively grin, “Many people were not that lucky.”

“Vol…” Sirius hesitated, as if there were still a Taboo on his name, “He is gone… right?” I nodded, that bit of good news, at least, was true. Sirius sighed with such relief that he sagged in his chair, “About bloody time.” he muttered and I couldn’t help the laugh that snuck out. He cocked his head to the side, rather doggishly and eyed me quizzically, “Why are you keeping me in the dark, Moony? Haven’t I proved I’m me yet?”

I nodded. Truly, he had.

“Sooo may I have my wand?” He asked, reaching out a hand. When I hesitated, he added, “Come now, Professor, haven’t I been a good boy?”

Arousal crackled downwards but guilt stamped it out before it got very far, “Don’t do that,” I muttered, shaking my head.

His eyebrows lifted and for a second he looked just like he had in Hogwarts, imperious, playful, impossible to refuse. Then his brow furrowed and he threw his arms out, “Remus, enough! Stop being coy and tell me what the bloody hell is going on!”

His burst of frustration didn’t intimidate me, it hadn’t in years. I had had the advantage in physical strength always, a small benefit to lycanthropy, but even apart from that I held the advantage of his wand, and more importantly information. Besides, back in our school days he’d sometimes grow frustrated with me three times before breakfast, and I learned to take it in stride. He gave me his best pureblood glare and I gave an apologetic shrug, “You’ll get your wand after the story.”

Sirius crossed his arms, “One hell of a story if you can’t trust me with a wand for it.”

I shook my head and looked down into my tea, growing cold quickly, “I just want to ensure you won’t storm out before I’ve finished telling it.”

Even without looking at him, I could feel curiosity overtake his anger. He was quiet and when I looked up again, his chin rested in his hand as if he were waiting for Professor McGonagall to start a lecture on the Transfiguration of Food and not for his lifelong friend, sometime lover, aging werewolf to shake the foundations of his reality. I cleared my throat and said as calmly as I could, “It’s been ten years since the night you... disappeared.”

He stiffened. He’d clearly puzzled out that he’d missed some time, but he clearly hadn’t expected it to be that much, “Ten years.” he repeated. Not a question, just an attempt at wrapping his head around it.

I nodded, “It’s March of the year 2006,” I saw Sirius’ eyes widen but kept going, “In the beginning of 1996, Voldemort was poised to come back into power but the Ministry was in denial,” Sirius nodded, clearly remembering that much, “Voldemort lured Harry and some of his classmates to the Ministry where a fight broke out in the Department of Mysteries,” Sirius’ eyes narrowed, as if trying to remember an Arithmancy formula mid-exam, “In the ensuing chaos you began dueling with Bellatrix and she knocked you through the veil.”

Sirius stared at me uncomprehendingly for a second and I could see the memories falling into place in the smoky grey of his eyes. Then the blood drained from his face, “...the veil? Like…” he ran his hand through his black hair, a mannerism that hadn’t changed since he was an adolescent with a spotty chin, “The life and death bloody _veil?_ ”

I nodded.

He gave a surprising bark of a laugh and I jumped, “Well, no wonder you thought I’d pegged out!” I raised one eyebrow and he gave me a look that brought to mind Padfoot’s tail between his legs, “Sorry, mate, to scare you ‘n’ all, but as I’m fine…” his words petered out, “There’s a lot more, eh?”

I nodded again.

“Right well, once you’ve caught me up, we can ask Dumbledore about this veil business,” Sirius said with a shrug, “I’m sure he’ll know what it’s about.”

“Dumbledore’s been dead seven years.” It was that statement that seemed to break through the armor of jokes and charm that Sirius had relied on as long as I’d known him, though his time in Azkaban had made the armor grow brittle and in some places sharp or strange. I watched as it crumbled. I knew the feeling, I’d felt the same way.

“Dumbledore can’t die.” He said, with the petulant faith of a child, “He’s…” he gestured impatiently with his hand, “He’s Dumbledore!”

“I know, I was sure he’d outlive us all,” I said, the back of my mind reminding me just how many of us he _had_ outlived, “There’s a lot to explain,” I glanced out the kitchen window at the not-quite-full moon, “And it’s late.”

When I looked back at him, he was looking at the moon, too. He understood. He knew my relationship with the moon in a way that no one else did. Not Andromeda, Harry, Teddy, not even Hermione with her generous monthly batch of Wolfsbane and her crusade against the marginalization of magical creatures. They never ever could. He’d seen me on countless full moons before Wolfsbane was even _invented_ , tearing myself to shreds and my mind lost to the wild nature of the wolf. He’d seen the trepidation before, the recovery after. He’d changed my bandages and spent days beside me in the Hospital Wing unwrapping chocolate frogs for me when my hands were injured or shaking. He’d kissed every scar he could find on my skin. He looked back at me, the moonlight pale on his too-young face and I wondered if he knew what I was thinking. He leaned back in his chair as if I was recounting a day at the office and said, “Go on then.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

### Sirius

  
  


By the time Remus’ tale was told, the sun was rising outside. I wasn’t sure when I’d stopped asking questions, too riveted to interrupt him. I didn’t quite blame him for being worried that I might make a break for it, some bits of the story were too unjust, too sickening and I had to fight the urge to run pointlessly into the night.  There was a beat of silence and then he sat forward in his chair, scrubbing his hands over his face, “Alright, mate,” he said, his voice hoarse from talking all night. It might have turned me on if I hadn’t been so damned tired myself, “It’s… been a hoot, but it’s full moon tonight and even with Wolfsbane, I can’t go into it on no sleep.”

“You’ve Wolfsbane?” I asked, “But…” the only person I’d known was qualified to make it had been Snape, and I’d only just heard of his death. Surely Remus hadn’t become any better at potion-making in the last ten years.

He seemed to recognize my confusion and smiled a bit as he said, “Hermione.”

I was about to say that that must be against some law or Hogwarts rule and then shook my head, “When do you get used to them being grown?” I asked.

His smile grew a bit, “I’ll let you know when I do.”

I stood up and stretched, and reached for my pocket to send our long-forgotten mugs to the sink, “Bloody hell, Moony, can I have my wand already?”

“Oh, of course,” he said, sending the the mugs to the sink before retrieving it from his pocket and sounding a bit embarrassed, “Sorry.”

I brushed it off with a shrug and reached to take it, only this time my hand did make contact with his. A familiar thrill went through me, up my arm and then down my spine. I looked at him to find his eyes trained on our hands, my wand still cradled between them. I wanted nothing more than to grab him to me and give him ten years worth of kisses, against the wall like before, on the table beside the sugar bowl, on the floor. But I _knew_ Moony, as a friend and a packmate long before I knew him as a lover, and there was uncertainty writ large on his face, in the line of his shoulders, in the tense twitch of his fingers in the instant before he pulled his hand away as if he’d been burnt.

 _You were dead,_ I reminded myself, _that would be strange for anyone._ He shot me a guilty look and started out of the kitchen, “Sirius, I… really need to go to sleep.”

“I never suggested otherwise,” I pointed out. I expected him to stop at the nearest bedroom to the kitchen, the one that had been his before. _The one we shared at times._ But he kept going, making a hasty retreat up the stairs, “Oi, Moony!” I called after him and he turned back to look at me over his shoulder, “Have you been sleeping in my old room?” I asked, unable to keep the smirk away from my lips.

He flushed slightly but his voice was steady as he said, “I didn’t think you’d be coming back to claim it.” before turning and fleeing.

I couldn’t help but sigh, hoping his werewolf ears didn’t hear it, or didn’t sense the disappointment there. When I’d… woken up? Come to? When I’d remembered him, and felt the powerful urge to get back to him, I hadn’t imagined this would be my homecoming. I’d imagined a few variations, but they all ended with him in my arms. But I couldn’t have imagined this. He’d grieved for me the past ten years, moved on from the loss it seemed. I got the sense there might even be someone else though he’d made no mention of it. I felt a swell of jealousy but shook it off. I’d been dead, for all intents and purposes. Would I have wanted him to just wait and grow old alone? Would I have resigned myself to being an old maid had it been him that disappeared behind the veil?

Honestly, I couldn’t say. I’d missed so much, and my mind was struggling to keep up. It was like that Muggle story Lily had told me about once, about the American bloke who slept for twenty years. Only she’d mentioned he’d had a great big beard, and I touched my face, grateful to have been spared at least that one injustice. As I had many times over the years, I wished Lily was there to give me advice. She’d been good at it. It seemed dreadfully unfair that I’d been ‘dead’ for ten years, and it hadn’t even been a kind of death that reunited me with my late friends.

Well, if Lily wasn’t going to be giving me advice, and Remus wasn’t going to hold me, the next best thing for a head this full and a heart this heavy was sleep. I tore my eyes away from the spot Remus had vacated on the stairs and opened the door to the bedroom by the kitchen. My breath caught in my throat. _Oh, Moony._ It hadn’t been touched in a long time, ten years if I had to guess. There was a film of dust over everything, a sheet spilling from the bed where I was pretty sure I’d tripped over it in my haste. I saw the sleeve of a black shirt peeking out from the bed and glanced down, realizing I was still wearing the one I’d borrowed from Remus’ basket years ago. I crept into the room and stared for a moment, thinking about the hushed words and touches that had been exchanged in that bed the last time it was occupied.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering how it was that after Remus’ long tale of woe it was _this_ that brought tears to my eyes. With a swish of my reclaimed wand, I had the room clean and tidied. I hoped Remus wouldn’t mind, but then reminded myself that I was _alive_ and therefore he had no need of a shrine to my memory. I wasn’t a memory. I was alive.

I kicked off my shoes on the way to the bed, depositing my wand on the rickety bedside table and dropping my clothes in a heap on the newly clean floor. The air against my bare skin offered some comfort despite the chill. Each goosebump raised, each hair that stood on end, each small shiver seemed to chant my new mantra _I am alive, I am alive, I am alive._

I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

### Remus

  
  


I woke with the moon gnawing at my bones with fierce teeth. Judging by the light from outside, it was already afternoon and moonrise was only a few hours away. I was lying on my side looking past my wand and the stack of books beside the bed at the wall where teenaged Sirius had used a Permanent Sticking Charm to adhere a poster of a Muggle girl in a bikini astride a motorbike. I remembered him telling me that the irony of his disinterest in women was the best part, before kissing me as if to prove it. Not that that proved anything. Being attracted to him certainly hadn’t prevented me from being attracted to women, although scantily clad Muggles on motorbikes weren’t quite my type. I wondered for the umpteenth time what good a Permanent Sticking Charm did if you couldn’t be buggered to make sure the posters were _even_ first. It would never stop irking me that they were crooked and could never be fixed.

I groaned in pain as I dragged myself up into a sitting position, every muscle in my body resisting. I knew I had to get up, as much as my bed (Sirius’ old bed) beckoned me to stay. I had to get up and drink my Wolfsbane, though, so as torturous as it was, I managed to lever myself upright. If it was this or losing my consciousness during the transformation tonight, this was the lesser of two evils. I ran my fingers through my hair and winced when I caught sight of myself in the mirror by the wardrobe. If Sirius was going to come back from the dead, couldn’t he have done it a few years sooner before I looked quite so ancient? My vanity wished it hadn’t been on the eve of a full moon when I looked my worst, but in all honesty, I felt a fond quickening of my heart at the thought of spending the full moon with him. I hadn’t dreamed I’d ever get another. I let the relief and joy consume me for a second before I reminded myself that I had no right. No right to rejoice that my lost love had returned when I had another lost love who I was entirely too certain wasn’t coming back. I thought of trying to explain any of this to Teddy, thought of the accusation in Andromeda’s eyes that her daughter had died for me for no reason. It stamped out the fire of my joy at once.

I wondered briefly what Tonks herself would have to say, if I could ask her, but just thinking of the way she’d say, “what’s on your mind, love? C’mon, out with it then” threatened to strangle me. I didn’t know if it would hurt more or less if it wasn’t so hard to remember the sound of her voice.

I trudged down the stairs on stiff joints, trying not to grunt and whine as I would if I had been alone. Yes, Sirius had seen me on many a full moon but not on a creaky middle-aged full moon and I didn’t think I could bear it. Least of all when he was thirty-six and glowing. Oh, sure, the flower of his beauty had been faded by Azkaban, altered permanently to a shadow of what it had been once. But even a fraction of the beauty Sirius had had at twenty was more than most people could ever hope for. It wasn’t just a matter of beauty though, I knew, as I made it to the kitchen, it was a matter of magnetism. Azkaban or the veil could have eviscerated every last shred of his beauty and I would still be as drawn to him as ever. I began to hope that he felt the same way about me before I reminded myself that it made no difference. I couldn’t do that to Tonks’ memory.

I made tea for myself in a haze of drowsiness and aches, before filling a goblet from the cauldron of Wolfsbane Potion. I worried again about how Hermione was acquiring the costlier ingredients, but it was overshadowed by marvelling at the potion-making aptitude required to do it right. She’d always been the brightest in her year, but even so, it was no small feat. I stared for another moment at the bluish vapor that wafted off the surface of the potion before pinching my nose shut and downing it as quickly as I could. The stuff was _foul_ , worse than almost anything I’d ever tasted. I set the goblet down on the table with a clank, trying not to retch. I grabbed for my tea and took a quick gulp, swishing it around my mouth and trying to erase the taste of the potion.

I looked down at the table, taking another slow sip of my tea, when I realized the mugs from last night weren’t there. Surely I’d just grabbed the one in my hand from the sink or the rack, only the one. I felt my heart shatter in my chest, sending a vast wave of adrenaline crashing through me. I’d had dreams like this before, _oh Merlin_ , but none that vivid or that dull and somehow, _somehow,_ I’d let it trick me and I was sitting here drinking tea as though it were a normal world with Sirius in it and not the bleak one he’d vanished from a decade ago. I hadn’t taken him to bed, _why on Earth_ hadn’t I taken him to bed? Who knew the next time I’d have a chance to even dream his eyes and his touch and his voice as clearly as I had last night and now he was _gone._ My chair scraped loudly against the floor as I clambered to my feet, suddenly indifferent to my aching body or the groan that croaked out of me. When the missing him struck me with this ferocity, the only thing to do was to hide in my old room, _our_ old room, and pretend I could still smell him on the sheets until the pain withdrew back to a manageable distance inside myself.

I threw open the door to the room and froze. For a second, the sight of the clean room felt like I imagined a silver bullet must, tearing through me, tearing something vital out of me. But then I saw him and all the pain stopped, teetering in disbelief in a waking dream. He was sprawled naked atop the freshly-made bed. My eyes eagerly drank in the sight of him, and I didn’t even realize I was approaching him until I stood right over him. His wiry limbs, his narrow back, even the way his flesh folded where he twisted at the waist. I had always been a fool for Sirius’ face in sleep, open and unguarded like he might have been as a child had be grown up anywhere but here. His lips were parted slightly, his eyelashes casting tiny fringed shadows on his sharp cheekbones, all surrounded by the wild dark halo of his hair. He was here, sweet Merlin, he was really here, alive and whole and beautiful and my lips were on his before I knew I was bending down.

He stiffened sharply at the moment of contact, his keen survival instincts telling him to fight or flee, but then he knew it was me and he sighed into me, opened his mouth against me, one hand lifting to tangle in my hair.

### Sirius

There was no better way to be welcomed back to the world than Remus’ lips yielding against mine. The kiss was soft and wistful until my tongue brushed his and he growled. It was the full moon and the wolf wasn’t far from the surface, and I felt my heart pound, eagerly sending blood south, at the feral vibration in my mouth. The sound always used to set me off. My free arm found his waist and dragged him into the bed, and I growled back into him at the feeling of his pajama-clad form pressed against my nakedness. One of his hands squeezed my hip while the other came up to cradle my cheek and that was Remus. Tender and feral in one delectable, bookish package. I kissed him hungrily, like a man who’d been starved of contact for years. In a way, I suppose I was. He gave as good as he got, his teeth occasionally bouncing off mine in his eagerness, his hips flush against mine so I could feel when he grew harder against me. My hand that was wound in his maddeningly pullable grey hair tugged his head back, eliciting a gasp before my mouth had even landed on that magic spot at the side of his neck and a strangled moan escaped him. His scent was so strong there, old parchment and autumn winds and chocolate and my mouth quickened against him. The hand in his hair stayed there while the other slid between us, and he groaned again when it cupped his length through his pajamas. I squeezed slightly and relished the way he gasped, “Padfoot!” the first time he’d used the nickname since I’d returned.

“Mmm… Moony…” I growled against his neck between bites and kisses, dragging my hand along him, “My Moony… you’re the only one…”

As if I’d dunked his head in cold water, he froze. The grinding of his hips stopped, his voice sputtered out mid-moan, his hands let go of me as though it hurt to touch me. Pushing down the sudden sting of rejection, I pulled back to look at him, finding his face ashen and aghast, his lips moving as though trying to find words, “Remus?” I said, my voice trembling now with worry instead of lust, “Remus, what is it?”

“I…” he choked, “You’re not the-the only one.”

I cocked my head, and tried to smile reassuringly, “Well, Moony, I… I didn’t mean _ever._ Not for me either, and I mean…” I shrugged as if I didn’t mind, “I… was gone ten years, yeah? I wouldn’t suspect you’d been a monk.”

He gave a watery laugh, and then hit himself, literally slapped himself in the face, in a way that reminded me of a House Elf. I reached out a hand to stop him from doing it again but he shook his head in a way that brooked no argument. I watched his jaw working, his eyes cast to the side when he finally he said, “I don’t mean sex.” I raised my eyebrows, no idea where this was going, “I mean… l-love. Padfoot,” he drew in a shaky breath, “I was _married._ ”

“Married?” I parroted dumbly, trying to make it add up. I knew it was allowed some places and who knew what had changed in ten years, anyhow, “To another _bloke?_ ”

“To a girl,” he corrected, and then amended himself, “A woman.” A tear escaped his eye and something clicked into place in my head. Not the woman bit, or the married bit, or the love bit, but the bit that last night I’d felt like he was leaving something out when he was talking about the last battle with Voldemort.

“Oh, Moony, love,” I wanted to touch him, but I didn’t think he’d allow it. I lowered my voice, “...she died, didn’t she?” he nodded, wiping away tears impatiently, “Oh, Moony, I’m sorry.” I opened my mouth, wanting to ask how but not knowing if I should.

He scoffed a bitter laugh and actually rolled his eyes, “Bellatrix, _of course_.”

Bitter old hatred rose up in me and in that moment I wanted badly to kill my cousin, before I remembered that Remus had told me only the night before that Molly Weasley had beaten me to it. Remus must have seen the anger in my face because I watched in dismay as he withdrew from his, his eyes growing guarded as they’d been the night before, “Remus…” I started but he cut me off.

“ItwasTonks,” he forced out in a rush and I froze, blinked, tried to find sense, “Nymphadora Tonks. We married. We had a son. He’s eight.” he swallowed hard, “She’s dead.”

I stared at him in silence for a second and then the anger that had blossomed in me towards one late cousin redirected itself towards another, “Tonks?” I repeated blankly.

“Yes, dammit, you heard me, it was _Tonks_!” he cried in an un-Moony-ish burst of rage, reminding me again that tonight was the full moon, “And I didn’t just marry her, but I _loved_ her, and I _love_ the son that I made with her! And may I remind you that you were _dead?_ I was grieving and she was my friend and she understood and she _died because of me!_ ” With the feral grace of the wolf, Moony leapt from the bed and was mostly to the door when he turned and said, with unsettling calm so close to an outburst, “I suggest you go see Harry. He and Ginny fixed up the old Tudor down the lane from the Burrow. It’s the weekend and I’m sure you’d have a more pleasant time with him than you’re likely to have with me right now.”

I flopped back against the bed, intending to feel sorry for myself, but as disturbing as this news about Moony was, found a bubble of excitement swelling in my chest at the thought of the look on Harry’s face when I showed up at his door.

### Remus

  
  


Even with Wolfsbane, it would do me no good to be this emotionally distressed before a full moon. I should have known better. Of course, Sirius wouldn’t understand. Of course, he’d be jealous and unfair. I flipped blindly through the book in my hands, startled when I heard the distinctive _crack_ of Sirius apparating. I hoped he really was going to see Harry, maybe he could talk some sense into him.

At Hogwarts, I used to envy James’ ability to speak Sirius’ language, and now I envied the same skill in Harry. Sirius and I had been best friends since we were children, but we’d never learned the proper way to speak each other’s language. Where I expected facts, Sirius gave impressions, and where he expected facts, I gave emotion. We’d spent half of our school years pining after each other, dropping hints and signals to which the other was completely blind, and didn’t even manage to kiss until seventh year, when Sirius had just enough firewhiskey in celebration of a Quidditch game gone in Gryffindor’s favor to feel that he was invincible. I remembered with an aching tenderness how that feeling of invincibility had rubbed off on me, how we’d held hands under tables, fingers inching challengingly up each other’s thighs. How we’d slipped into Hogwarts’ numerous secret passageways to trade hot fumbling kisses and grandiose Gryffindor promises, feeling untouchable even while Voldemort amassed an army and innocents died.

Muggles and Muggleborns were already being found in their homes, felled by spells so grisly and macabre that people grew frightened to even speak the name responsible for such violence. Even without the threat of Voldemort and the rumors of the dark creatures flocking to his side, it was a bleak path that awaited me outside of Hogwarts. No amount of hard work or brains could keep me employed once my true nature was discovered. The war and strife of adulthood came between us when we’d only just found our way into each other’s arms. Sirius and James were on the front lines until the Potters had to go into hiding and once that happened, there was no turning back. The wolf in me caused even my dearest friends to doubt my loyalty, even Sirius, and I was distanced from them more and more until suddenly in one night, they weren’t just shutting me out, they were _gone._ Peter and James dead, Sirius carted off to Azkaban, wild-eyed on the front cover of the _Prophet_.

I sighed and let my face rest on the pages of my book. My body was on fire, as if acclimating me to pain now would ease the agony of transformation. It wouldn’t. It never did, yet every month my body tortured me for a day or two longer than necessary. With all this physical pain, did I really need to be running salt-dusted fingers along old wounds and making them sting? I could still feel the heat of Sirius’ kisses on my throat and lips and I hated how badly I wanted more. Merlin, he’d tasted the same, felt the same, smelled the same, that distinctive scent like pine wood, like brandy, that earthiness with a bite, with the familiar note of dog. He remembered Sirius saying once, soon after mastering becoming an Animagi, _smelling is sexier than sex to a dog_. I remembered how easily we’d chuckled at it, sharing the canine knowledge, pretending not to want the human carnal knowledge needed for comparison. Thirty years later, and I still wanted him just the same. _Not bloody likely after your little outburst_ , I reminded myself and groaned into my book. I could go on in my head about how Sirius and I were both rubbish at communicating with each other, but there was no denying that I took first prize this time in Putting Foot In Mouth Division.

A wave of missing Tonks came over me, and I sighed shakily making the page corner by my mouth rustle. Speaking with her had come so effortlessly compared to Sirius. What our relationship may have lacked in reckless, helpless, longing fire, it had made up for in safety and clarity and warmth. She had understood me, accepted me implicitly, intuited the nature of my and Sirius’ relationship before I’d ever had to try to explain it.

Because she’d seen it, after all, and she was one of the most perceptive people under the sun. When Sirius had come back, _the first time_ , when he’d escaped Azkaban with paternal aspirations and dreams of revenge, when he’d fallen back in with the Order in this very house, the house he hated, we’d been mere walls apart. The proximity-induced madness that had afflicted us in our seventh year dorm came back, and this time it demanded blood. There was no denying it. By that time we were both adults, both of us world-weary, embittered, scarred, but alone together we were teenagers. All knocking teeth and clumsy hands on flies and purple bruises surfacing on our necks and shoulders and thighs. We glamoured as many marks as we could, put up silencing charms when we remembered, kept a fraternal demeanor in company, but the more perceptive Order members were not fooled, and Tonks had a better sense for those things than anyone.

And then he was gone. _Again._ The first time I could call him a traitor, make him a scapegoat, try to convince myself I was glad my beautiful Padfoot was rotting in Azkaban. But the second time, he wasn’t a disgraced hero and friend. He didn’t even have the decency to die in a normal way, _Avada Kedavra’_ ed or bleeding out in my arms, he just _fell._ Vanished. Disappeared from view as if he’d simply walked out of the room to fetch a sweater. Didn’t even leave me anything to bury.

And Tonks had seen, Tonks had felt my pain, Tonks had, without a doubt, saved me. Saved me in a million little ways. Holding my hand under the table when Sirius’ name came up in Order meetings. Making me laugh when I didn’t even want to breathe. Putting a bottle in my hand when it was what I needed and taking it away when it was making me worse. Making sure I ate, making sure I slept, making sure I didn’t get killed by a hundred curses that I might have let hit me. She accepted every last broken ugly truth about me, she became my family, she saved me.

But I couldn’t save her.

And now Sirius was back, sending me reeling again like I was seventeen. And if he disappeared again, there would be no Tonks to understand my grief. There would just be the grief and the empty rooms of Grimmauld Place, and my Teddy, who deserved so much better a father than me.

 


	3. Chapter 3

  
  


### Sirius

It was only after I’d apparated to the street the Burrow was on that it occurred to me how funny it was that Remus thought I had the faintest impression of  what made a Tudor style house different from any other style of house. I tried to be inconspicuous as I walked down the side of the road, peering into yards and looking for clues as to which one might be home to Harry (and apparently, Ginny). I was considering going up to the door of a blue house (that I thought might be a Tudor style) based on the rather Weasley-ish disarray of the garden. But then a sound pulled my attention across the street where a medium-sized house covered in dark wood beams sat, a flagpole in front flying three flags. At the top, a flag displayed the proud Gryffindor lion all festooned in scarlet and gold, snapping in the winter wind. Beneath it, the green and gold logo of the Quidditch team, the Holyhead Harpies. But it was the bottom-most one that told me, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was where Harry and Ginny made their home, although I was sure that most who passed it did not recognize the understated circular logo with the letters ‘D.A.’ inside it, nor would they guess what it stood for.

I wasn’t in Padfoot’s form, but I bounded for the door with all the canine joy a human body could hold. I rapped on the door, and realized the laughter from within was what had drawn me. It must have been Harry, but instinctively I had recognized it as a packmate. As James. I hadn’t noticed before how alike their laughs were.

I bounced from heel to toe nervously, impatiently, as I listened to a woman’s voice come closer to the door, “...don’t exactly think I’ll be getting on a broom anytime soon, and that way--” she stopped talking abruptly as she opened the door. Her brown eyes widened at the sight of me, while my grey eyes widened at the sight of her very pregnant belly. I struggled to reconcile the beautiful ( _very_ pregnant) woman in the doorway with the red-haired child I’d been acquainted with but her sudden shriek interrupted my train of thought. Harry was at the door in a flash, wand out and shielding Ginny with his body before he even looked at the visitor. It struck me with a bitter pang, watching that unflinching display of Gryffindor heroics probably not unlike the last moments of their lives, that Harry was older now than James and Lily ever lived to be.

Harry’s face was like stone, betraying nothing at the sight of me. I lifted my hands in the same universal signal of innocence that I’d employed on the stairs with Remus the night before, “I’m sorry,” I said honestly, “Moony didn’t say anything about Ginny being…” my eyes drifted in the direction of her belly, “I wouldn’t have--”

Harry pointed his wand at my nose, his green eyes steely in a way I’d heeded as a warning sign in his mother in our school days, “What were the last words you spoke to me directly in the Department of Mysteries?” he asked.

I was grateful for the lengthy synopsis Remus had given me the night before, otherwise my memory may have been too foggy to answer him correctly, “ ‘Take the prophecy, grab Neville, and run’.” I quoted myself.

I saw Harry’s demeanor soften slightly, but to follow Order protocol, I asked, “What was your codename for me during your fourth year at Hogwarts?”

“Snuffles,” Harry said fondly, looking more like the Harry I had known with his shoulders relaxing and a big tearful grin spreading across his face. Before I could say another word, he had thrown himself at me, his arms wrapping like a vice around my midsection. I hugged him back fiercely, before peeking up at Ginny. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking a bit pink around the ears.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “About, uh, _screaming._ You just surprised me and--”

“And I’ve been assumed dead for the past decade?” I finished for her and she nodded. Harry only squeezed tighter.

“How--” she began, but a small inquisitive voice interrupted her.

“Mummy?” the voice said, “Who is?”

It was only this new arrival that made Harry release me, and I took a deep breath to fill my previously compressed lungs. Harry bent down and scooped up… his child? A wave of weariness washed over me, something like ‘I really am old’ and ‘I really have been gone a long time’. Hadn’t Harry only just been a bundle of joy in James’ arms a blink ago? My eyes focused on the child--Harry’s child--and I couldn’t help but smile. He couldn’t have been more than two, all chubby cheeks and huge blue eyes, topped off with that characteristic unruly black hair, “This is Sirius,” Harry was saying, “He’s your…”

“Uncle?” Ginny offered uncertainly.

“...grandpa?” Harry’s eyes glittered behind his glasses as he glanced at me for approval. I didn’t care suddenly, if it meant I was old or out of touch, I nodded rapidly in acceptance of the title.

“Have gappa.” the child said, looking at Ginny, who smiled.

“Gappa is my daddy, James,” she said pointing to herself, “Sirius,” she said pointing at me, “Is like your daddy’s daddy.”

The little boy, James, I noted with a twinge, looked skeptical for a second and then said, “Okay. Gappa. Shiw… Shwer.. Shers…”

“Padfoot?” I said, putting my hand on my chest, watching the relief on my god-grandchild’s face.

“Gappa Pafoo!” I grinned broadly and nodded. He started squirming to get down, which Harry obliged, and I shut the door behind me as Harry watched his son toddle over to his mum.

“Grandpa Padfoot, eh?” Harry said, all bright eyes and proud puffed chest.

“You look just like your dad did with you,” I told him, because it was true, “Natural with him. He’d be so proud.”

Harry eyes shone with happy tears, “Sirius… I don’t know how, but...” he said, and the words caught in his throat.

“I’m happy I can be here, too,” I agreed and he nodded and hugged me again, more quick and grown up this time.

“He’s named for you, too, you know,” he said after a moment standing side by side, watching Ginny and James. I looked at him with wide eyes, “James Sirius Potter,” he said, a bit reverently, “After… grandfathers.”

I didn’t try to stop the tears that welled in my eyes, but joked through it, “I always wanted the Potters to adopt me. It’s about time.”

Harry clapped me on the back and led me into the kitchen, put a cup of tea in front of me shortly. I could hardly take my eyes off of James (James Sirius!) and Ginny deeply engaged in something between an intense conversation and a game where he tried to finish her sentences by identifying pictures she drew with her wand. It was amazing, I felt transported. Not only for their physical likenesses, but for the atmosphere in their home, I might have been at James and Lily’s house twenty-odd years before. Harry must have noted my gaze glued to his son, because he asked conversationally, “Have you met Teddy yet?”

I turned to look at him blankly and repeated, “Teddy?”

Harry’s calm smile folded into a curious frown, “Teddy _Lupin_ ,” he said, with a tinge of the snark I’d have recognized as _Potter_ anywhere, “Remus and Tonks’ son.”

I squirmed uncomfortably even though the kitchen chair was too comfortable not to have had a Cushioning Charm on it. I shook my head once, “I only just learned he existed-- I only just came back _yesterday_ \-- and with the full moon tonight--”

Harry interrupted my excuses, “Blimey, Sirius, I’m not going to give you detention!” he laughed, “I was just curious. He’s a great kid, you’re going to love him.”

I nodded stiffly and worried that it didn’t escape Harry’s observation, “What’s he like?” I asked him, out of both politeness and morbid curiosity. Whoever his parents were and whatever he was like, it wasn’t as if it was the blasted child’s fault.

“Smart as whip,” Harry said at once, “Not that that’s any huge surprise given his parents. He’s bright and mischievous, but he’s got this sweetness to him,” I looked at Harry, spying the same proud paternal smile on his face again, “Maybe something to do with his mum being a Hufflepuff, I could see him being one himself when he heads to Hogwarts in a few years. He’s got that bleeding heart Hufflepuff goodness, ya know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, and said after a pause, “Remus has a bit of that, too,” I said, a bit wistfully, “Or _had_ at least in our school days. He’s hardened a bit now, though, I reckon.”

Harry nodded and took a sip of tea, “He still had it when he taught us at school. The open-mindedness and nurturing business…” he sighed, “Losing Tonks took a lot out of him.” I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, but I felt Harry’s eyes on me, “Sirius?”

So I wasn’t getting off that easy, “Hm?”

“Dunno what’s… going on with you and Remus, but…” he met my eyes and I could see that Lily steel in his gaze again, “You should know that they loved each other. When you die-- when you-- Well, Remus was just _gutted_ at losing you, ya know? His last Marauder and all and… he, as you said, he _hardened_. Closed up, withdrew. Tonks cared, she cheered him up, got on his last nerve, asked him questions… anything to keep him here. He went on this just… absolutely _mental_ undercover mission with Greyback’s werewolves just to try and avoid falling in love with her,” as Harry rambled on, I could feel my stubbornness slipping, and felt guilty. Guilty that Remus had avoided telling me this to keep me from lashing out, and ashamed of myself that he’d been right, “And… even when they did get together, and get married, and had Teddy… I think it terrified him how much she loved him, and how much he loved her. You know how scared Remus is of letting himself have anything good. And when she was gone… well, sure, he hardened and withdrew and all, but he stuck around _for Teddy._ So if you...” he gave me an appraising look, and it felt a little like Mad-Eye Moody’s magic eye looking into my heart and seeing some rather private things, “If you want Remus to keep giving two shits about you, you’re going to have to deal with the fact that the life he lived without you isn’t going anywhere.”

I didn’t say anything for a while because I didn’t know what to say, and when a laugh spilled out of me like a bark, it surprised me as much as it surprised him, “Merlin’s balls, Harry, when did you get so _smart?_ ”

He grinned a bit sheepishly, “Some time in the last ten years, I reckon.”

“It sure wasn’t before that,” I ribbed, “I thought _I_ was supposed to give the fatherly advice!” Harry shrugged sympathetically.

“Harry,” Ginny said from the other room, “We ought to floo Ron and Hermione, don’t you think? They’ll want to show him to Rose, and then he’ll only have to explain how the devil he’s here once.” I’d never had much chance to get to know Ginny before, but I was beginning to think I liked her.

### Remus

The transformation hadn’t been so excruciating in a long time, with or without Wolfsbane, and I knew my emotional state was to blame. It wasn’t something I’d ever been able to make absolute sense of, and documentation of lycanthropy wasn’t limited and terribly biased, but it was something I’d known to be true for years. The more agitated, sad, angry, whathaveyou I was the day of the moon, the more fiercely the wolf took it out on my body.

I usually slept through the night as the wolf when I’d taken Wolfsbane, but it wasn’t an option tonight. The brutal transformation meant a lot of superficial wounds and a long night of pain. And even that wasn’t enough to distract me from my thoughts. Normally, I didn’t mind the solitude, embraced it even. But tonight I was painfully aware of it, because it meant Sirius’ absence. The wolf in me keenly felt the loss of my pack as I lay on the floor in the drawing room where I knew it would be easy to wash my blood from the hardwood. I looked past the cobwebbed velvet curtains and watched the moon’s journey through the sky, remembering the first time I’d taken the potion that allowed me to keep my mind, stared at the moon for the first time since childhood, bitter and aching at the absence of my pack.

What was I going to do if Sirius didn’t come back? If he chose to stay with Harry or find a place of his own or run away as Padfoot or die in some stupid senseless way? He had suggested asking Dumbledore about the veil, and I wished more than anything that I could. If Sirius was going to disappear from the land of the living again, I wanted warning. The thought of losing him again made every muscle in my body tense painfully and I cried a pathetic canine whine.

The moon had sank out of view, just a pale glow behind the other buildings. That was good, it meant the night would be ending soon and after the pain, I’d be me. Wholly me again and free for a month. Or at least, free from the wolf. Not free from grief, regret, loneliness. I tried to think of the article I was writing for my (anonymous) column in _Which Wizard_ but it was no use. It was a good position, one Ginny had managed to get me through a friend at _The Daily Prophet_ , the best I’d had since Hogwarts. But I couldn’t bring myself to care about it right now, however interesting this month’s topic (ways to incorporate Muggle medicine into Wizarding medicine) may have been to me.

I felt the first sharp pull of the moon nearing the horizon just as green flames flared in the hearth beside me and Sirius clambered into view. I looked up at him from the floor, feeling pathetic, and watched the smile on his face give way to a grimace of concern, “Moony!” the old nickname escaped him in a gasp and he dropped to his knees beside me at once. An instant later, the softly snuffling doggy warmth of Padfoot was curling up against me, hitting up against quite a few wounds concealed by my fur, but I didn’t care about the pain. He came back. I licked his face to tell him how happy his return made me. His tongue lolled from his mouth in a canine smile before he licked me back. _If only we only ever communicated in canine,_ I wished, not for the first time, _It’s so much easier._

I wasn’t up for the tussling and tail chasing and playing we used to get up to in the Shrieking Shack, on account of the wounds from the harrowing transformation, but I was relieved to find that Sirius didn’t seem to mind. He curled around me closer, every inch the protective hound, his tail swishing against the hardwood in a slow lazy wag, placing the occasional nudge or lick on my face and ears.

When the pain came as the moon set, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been at moonrise. Which is to say, it was still agony. Each inch of my skin prickled as my fur withdrew, feeling like tiny barbed needles in every pore. My bones cracked and shrank and rattled back into place making a flesh feel like a shaken sack of jagged stones. My organs stretched and shrank and twisted, the worst extreme of the helplessness of nausea, short breath, and a racing heart. I howled and thrashed in pain, but Padfoot kept me against him with strong paws. Gradually my howls turned into human screams which sank into whimpers. The paws loosened around me and I curled into a fetal position, feeling the reassuring warmth of fur wrap around me protectively, a velvet tongue licking away the tears on my face.

  
  


### Sirius

Witnessing the agony of Remus’ transformation had always been torture. Back in our school days, in the Shack each month, I’d always thought the worst part was watching Remus --his kindness, his quiet brilliance, his dry humor-- disappear from his eyes as the wolf took over. In hindsight, this might be worse, knowing he was in there, conscious, feeling it all. Either way, as the wolf’s formidable body shrank to Remus’ bleeding, naked form and howls shrank into whimpers, my heart ached with the memory of every full moon I’d known him.

I wrapped around him as securely as I could, knowing how desperately he always needed comfort the morning after, hoping Padfoot could ease the pain. _Heaven knows I’d make a mess of it_ , I thought, _But Padfoot knows what to do._ We had all talked about our Animagus forms as though they were separate from us, even though it wasn’t quite how it was. We’d been following the lead of the way Remus talked about the wolf, but at the end of the day, there was a ring of truth to it. The animal instincts had a mind of their own, and dogs have an unrivaled nurturing instinct. Especially when their master is crying and wounded on the floor.

I felt Remus’s hands fist into the thick fur of my ruff, his arms looped loosely around my neck, “Padfoot,” he murmured softly into my chest, and my heart broke at the fragility in his tone. I gave a soft reassuring whine against his cheek, followed by a small lick. He cried for a while and then whispered, “Padfoot, please turn back.”

I promised Padfoot I would try not to muck it up and hurt Moony and blurred back into my human form. No sooner did I have arms again than they were wrapping around Moony’s waist and pulling him against me. I pressed a kiss against the top of his head and he clung to me fiercely, quivering with tears of pain and exhaustion. I hated the pain, hated the curse that did this to him once a month, but there was a selfish part of me that loved the softness, the openness, the vulnerable need of post-moon Moony. I loved every Moony, though, even the less endearingly clingy ones. When he had quieted to no more than the occasional hiccup, I tucked my chin against his shoulder and said softly against his ear, “I’m sorry, Moony.”

“Padfoot…” he said again, muffled against my chest.

“It’s just… a lot. I’ve ten years of catching up to do,” he nodded weakly against me, “It’ll take a while for me-- for, for both of us-- to… figure out where we stand.”

He was quiet for a while before loosening his grip on me enough to look up at me. His nose was red and running, his eyes irritated from a long night and crying, but my heart skipped at seeing them returned to their natural color, a liquid brown like molasses. His eyes searched mine, open and vulnerable like they had been while we kissed, not shuttered and distant, “Sirius,” he said, one hand moving from the back of my neck to my cheek, watching as I leaned into the touch, “Just…” he hesitated,his voice barely above a whisper, “Don’t leave.”

I shook my head and buried my face against the side of his neck, “Never again.” I promised, meaning it desperately, with every fiber of my being. Whether as a lover or not, Remus was family. We’d been through too much together, had too many memories that only we shared, it wasn’t something you could walk away from. I squeezed him a little tighter as if to prove my point and he gave a cry of pain. I let go instantly, seeing his hands cover the wound on his side that I had aggravated, “Oh, blimey, sorry.”

He waved it off and told me through gritted teeth as he sat up, “‘S’healing potions and things in the kitchen. Under the sink.” I nodded, hopping to my feet and fetching a basket heaped with jars, gauze, and stoppered bottles of potions.

“Tough moon?” I asked a bit cautiously as I started dabbing a healing salve onto the wound on Moony’s side. He winced, but nodded, “Right then, you’ll want milk in your tea when we get done here.” I said, smiling gratefully at the rasp of a laugh from him, not least of all because I suspected my showing up had made the moon harder than it had to be.

“How’s Harry keeping?” Remus asked conversationally, although his voice wavered slightly, as he wound bandage around a shallow but long wound on his left forearm.

“Bloody brilliant,” I said, unable to resist a grin, “Though you might’ve warned me about James.”

“Ja--? _Oh,_ James,” Remus said, in a moment of confusion I imagined would become a regular part of my life, “I thought a pleasant surprise might give you a little perspective,” I arched a brow at him and he rolled his eyes, “Alright, fine, so I forgot you didn’t know. It’s been an eventful decade.”

I nodded, a bit solemnly, moving on silently to a rather rough-looking wound on Remus’ calf. He noted the silence and gently urged, “Padfoot?”

Merlin, but I was glad to have the nickname back. I shrugged, “I just feel like a prat,” I admitted, watching the salve work towards mending the wound, “Harry had some choice words for me, and then they told Ron and Hermione and they flooed right over,” I couldn’t help but smile, “She is _very_ protective of you, you know.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he said, but I could hear the fondness in his tone.

“I’m glad people were taking care of you,” I said, eager to rush the words out before I thought better of them.

“What?” Remus asked, catching my gaze, and with his brown eyes soft and curious like that, I thought I’d have given him just about anything he asked for.

“When I was… gone,” I said, fighting the temptation to avert my gaze, “I’m glad you had people looking after you. Like Hermione… and Tonks.”

I watched a flurry of emotions, grief and guilt and surprise, flit across his eyes and then he nodded, turning his face back to securing the bandage on his arm. He was quiet for a while but then he turned to me and I was caught off guard by the proud lopsided smile on his face, “They turned out brilliant, didn’t they?” he asked, already confident in the answer, “Harry and his mates?”

I grinned in agreement, “Completely brilliant,” I said and braced myself a little before adding, as casually as I could, “Now I’ve just got to meet Teddy.”

I’d surprised him as much as I hoped I would, watching the shock on his face give way to something like relief, “Well, I… I’m heading back to Andromeda’s tomorrow. I know you don’t have the greatest track record with your family but of course, she was disowned so maybe it’ll be different and--”

“I’d love to come, Moony,” I said, interrupting the ramble he’d fallen into, a side effect of excitement I knew well in him.

He couldn’t seem to stop smiling as he looked down at himself, ascertaining that all his wounds had been seen to. He blushed slightly at the realization that he was still naked, but the smile still didn’t fall as he said, “I’m going to dress and then I think I’ll take that tea you mentioned.”

“Yes, Professor.” I said, relishing the cough of indignation behind me as I got up and made my way into the kitchen.

 


	4. Chapter 4

### Remus

It was late afternoon by the time Sirius managed to drag my moon-weary body off the musty sofa. It was only when we were standing in front of the drawing room fireplace that I realized the nervous pinch hadn’t left his face. I touched his hand, trying to be reassuring, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.”

“Shouldn’t we owl first or something?” he stalled, shifting his weight.

“They’re already expecting me, Padfoot,” I tried not to roll my eyes.

“They bloody well aren’t expecting me,” he countered dryly, “I’m ten years dead.”

“Well, I live there,” I said, shortly. Teddy worried about me after moons, and I didn’t like to keep him waiting if I could help it, “And I’ve every right to bring a guest. Besides, I’d remind you that you and ‘Dromeda are family.”

He scoffed, “Well, I haven’t seen her since mummy dearest burned her off that tree over there.”

“She’ll be happy to see you,” I assured him, though in truth I wasn’t sure how Andromeda would take Sirius’ appearance in her home, “Now quit whinging or I’ll go along without you.” Sirius shrugged his concession and grabbed a handful of floo powder from the bowl. He nodded a bit stiffly when I told him the address and I went first.

I emerged into the Tonks house parlor and gave a sigh of relief at being out of the oppressive ambience that permeated Grimmauld Place, “I’m home!” I called and heard a small shriek of glee from upstairs, followed by small feet pounding down the steps, “Don’t run on the stairs!” I admonished and the steps slowed a bit, but the second Teddy came into sight at the bottom of the stairs, a streak of turquoise was flying towards me, ending when he collided with me in a hug.

“Dad’s home!” he called, and Andromeda peeked around the door that led into the kitchen.

“I see that,” she said with a smile at me, “He might appreciate a bit of room to breathe, dear.”

Teddy let go, looking a bit bashful, I opened my mouth to assure him it was fine, when I saw the green glow of the fire reflected on his face, “I’ve a guest swinging by,” I told Andromeda quick as I could get it out, as if that would explain the person about to step out of the fireplace.

I didn’t need to look to know the moment he came into view, Andromeda’s jaw dropping was signal enough. She wasn’t stunned enough for silence, however, and said rather than asked, “Sirius Black.”

Sirius cleared his throat uncomfortably and I sensed him shifting his weight, “Cousin Andie,” he said, trying to sound at ease, “Good to see you.”

“I thought you were…” her gaze snapped back to me, “Remus, I thought…”

“It came as quite a surprise to me as well,” I assured her, watching the suspicion that was making its home on her brow, “But you’ve my word, it’s really him and you’ve nothing to fear from him.”

I was relieved to see how much she trusted me, the suspicion receding significantly at my promise. Her nod was still a bit curt as she said, “I suspect this is the kind of story which has to be heard over tea.” She didn’t wait for our agreement before turning back into the kitchen.

I looked down, realizing Teddy had grown uncharacteristically silent. He was staring past me at Sirius, looking pale with fear. He wasn’t normally nervous around new people at all, but before I could address him, Sirius spoke first, “It’s all right, lad,” he said, gently but a bit awkwardly, “Your dad and I are old friends.”

“I know,” he said, and I was surprised by the steel in his tone. I tried to remember any time I’d mentioned Sirius to Teddy and I didn’t think he’d be able to recognize him on sight. Teddy tossed back his mop of hair defiantly, and I watched as it changed from turquoise to black, “You’re the wolf,” he said, “Aren’t you?”

“No, Teddy--” I started, but Sirius cut me off.

“Easy mistake, lad,” Sirius said, and I heard the laugh in his voice, “I’m actually the dog.”

“The… dog?” Teddy repeated, uncomprehending.

“The dog always used to protect me from the wolf when I was younger,” I explained, and Sirius and I exchanged a smile.

“You don’t look like a dog,” Teddy observed, crossing his arms.

“Thank you very much!” Sirius laughed and I felt him relaxing, and my heart swelled a little at the sight of him crouching down to Teddy’s eye level, “I liked that trick with your hair, by the way.”

Teddy glanced up at the black hair falling across his forehead and flushed, “Oh, that. I don’t really have control over it sometimes.”

“It takes a very powerful wizard to do it at all, you know,” Sirius encouraged and I couldn’t help the grin that spread on my face, mirroring my son’s.

“Can you do it?” Teddy asked, his eyes round at the prospect of meeting a fellow Metamorphmagus.

Sirius shook his head with a frown, “No, I’m just the dog.” At Teddy’s quizzical look, Sirius glanced up at me, seeking my permission for what he knew I’d know was his next move. I shrugged indulgently and a second later, Teddy was shrieking with delight at the large black dog beside me. With the innocent bravery of a child, he launched himself at Padfoot (I reminded myself to have a talk with him later about how to safely approach unfamiliar animals) and a tangle of petting, licking, and tussling began, and I was laughing along with the sight when Andromeda came in, carrying the tea tray and levitating a tray of her marvelous pumpkin scones. She nearly dropped them in shock at the sight of the large black dog wrestling playfully with her grandson but managed to place both trays on the side table before sitting down on the sofa and patting the spot beside her in a businesslike manner, “Remus, I think you’ve a story to tell me.”

I considered interrupting Sirius and making him help me tell the tale but Teddy had just discovered Padfoot’s penchant for fetch (with the help of a stick that had tumbled off the pile of firewood) and I hadn’t the heart to interrupt them. Andromeda was watching them with a skeptical eye as I bit into a scone and launched into the story. All told, it didn’t take very long to explain, not least of all because I had no real clue _how_ Sirius had come back from beyond the veil and knew only that he had.

Andromeda’s expression had softened considerably as she listened to me speak, and I thought it perhaps helped that Teddy and Padfoot had quieted down. Padfoot was wagging and accepting pets and scraps of pastry while Teddy prattled on about helping his gran with her garden of magical herbs and the Muggle novels he and I had been reading together, all with the preternatural focus and matter-of-fact honesty of an eight-year-old. I couldn’t keep the smile from my own lips any time I glanced at them. I looked back at Andromeda after observing Padfoot lick some crumbs from Teddy’s fingers and realized I’d stopped talking, having reached the end of my story. I was surprised to see a look on her face that I knew well. Not from her, but from her daughter, who had often pinned me with that expression, lips quirked in some private ironic joke, brows raised and a perceptive gleam in the eye, “I’m happy for you, Remus.”

I bristled a little, “Come again?”

“Someone you love returning from beyond the grave,” she explained with a wave of her hand towards Sirius, “It’s what we all dream of, isn’t it?” I nodded a bit stiffly, glancing aside, wishing for Andromeda’s sake that it had been Tonks who had somehow cheated death, “Oh, don’t look so repentant!” she said and my eyes snapped back to her, “Most of us don’t get a second chance, don’t you go wasting it feeling guilty!”

I opened my mouth to protest but then snorted a laugh, and then admitted, “I still can’t quite bring myself to trust it. I keep thinking he’s going to just disappear again.”

Andromeda gave me a sympathetic smile, reminding me again of her daughter, and laid a hand on my knee, “If he did, wouldn’t you hate if you’d spent the whole time fretting?”

“I would,” I had to admit, “I hope I’ll feel better after I’ve done some research, but I don’t think anyone entirely understands the way the veil works.”

“I certainly don’t,” she said, and took a long sip of her tea before saying, “Perhaps something the Ministry blokes were doing, according to the _Prophet_ they’re practically dismantling so many enchantments and re-warding and enchanting the whole place. Maybe something they did persuaded the veil to…” she made a pushing motion with her hands.

“Hmm, perhaps,” I agree, having been unable to come up with a suitable explanation myself.

“Research it if you like, and I know you will,” she said, with a half-smile, “But if I were you, I’d try to simply enjoy it.” her smile grew bittersweet, “If Dora, or my Ted were somehow returned to me…” she trailed off and then shook her head. She glanced back at Sirius and Teddy and said to me in a surprisingly light tone that contrasted the sadness in her eyes, “I hope he likes the stew I’ve made for supper, I’m afraid I don’t have any kibble on hand.”

### Sirius

_My motorbike purred beneath me, humming between my thighs like the magnificent beast that she was. The wind whipped my face, tugging at my hair but unable to penetrate the thick dragon-hide of my jacket. The clouds were like a dreamy sea of cotton below and the stars giggled conspiratorially in the velvet sky as they grew dimmer, dimmer, dimmer still. My bike gave a rather unladylike cough, belching smoke that smelled like dank stone and then I was hurtling towards the earth, unable to release the heavy weight of my bike, dragging me down like a traitorous anchor._

_I was ripped through the clouds and they were cold. Startlingly, heart-haltingly cold, reaching deep into me with icy fingers that seemed to chase away the very concept of happiness. The earth beneath me was dark, no twinkling lights of Muggle towns nor the headlamps of Muggle cars drifting like lazy shooting stars. It was just darkness, nothing but darkness. I didn’t know if I was still falling or if I was folded into a ball in a room carved out of stone, shrinking around me like a giant’s fist. Would I hit the ground any second, the impact breaking my body into a million shards? Had it already happened, leaving my consciousness a dark formless ghost tied to the pieces? It was impossible to tell in the darkness with that damnable cold seeping into every pore, making me want to cry like a kicked dog, making me want to howl like a wolf, grateful for the agony of the moon if only for its silver light ending the darkness. But the moon didn’t shine for the friendless, for the shattered, for the dead._

_And then I felt them around me, the softly fluttering folds of a veil around me, embracing me, strangling me, dragging me into an even deeper dark, whispering a wordless word that meant death and it was my death it was--_

“Sirius! Sirius! Wake up, damn you!” someone was shaking me and I fumbled for my wand before my eyes even opened and light, the first light, however muted filled my head.

Moonlight. Remus. Moony. I remembered with a sick rush, _traitor._ My wand was trained on him in a second and he stepped back, taking his hand from my shoulder, “Don’t touch me.” I said, my voice hoarse with… sleep? Screaming?

He took another step back, lifting his hands, “Padfoot, it’s just me, you were--”

“ _Traitor,_ ” I hissed and saw him recoil, “How could you believe his empty promises?”

“Sirius,” he said, as if speaking to a child, “You’re confused. It was a nightmare.”

 _A nightmare?_ A wave of relief washed over me. A nightmare! All just a bad dream! Well, hell, of course it had been! I’d never cared for the dark, that was all it was, James would tease me about it when Moony and I told him! What a damn imagination I had, all that nonsense about betrayal and wars and death. I laughed, “Merlin, Moony, I’m sorry! You oughta get to bed, I know how you hate going to class when you--” The grave look on his face made the words dry up in my throat. No, he was too old. This wasn’t our dormitory, I realized with a look around at the unfamiliar bedroom, I had no idea what this place was. I felt my breath growing ragged in my chest, snagging, tearing against those jagged shards I’d dreamed, they were real and I was dead and this was--

“Whoa, whoa, Padfoot, you’re all right,” Moony said, his voice quavering as he tried to soothe me, “You’re safe at--”

“James?” the word tore out of my throat in a rasping plea, but the flash of pain on Remus’ face answered my question and before the grief could envelop my heart, I remembered and hatred took its place, “ _Wormtail._ ”

Remus shook his head, tentatively taking a step back towards the bed, “He’s dead, too, Padfoot, it’s over.”

To my dismay, I felt frustrated tears well up in my eyes, making me feel like a petulant child. I lowered my wand, the contents of my head entirely too loud. The truth was trickling into my head in splashes and snatches of color and grief and relief, but making sense of it was coming slow. I growled at the sluggish pace of my own mind, but the sound emerged as more of a pitiable whimper. I was surprised when I felt Remus’ arms around me and realized I’d closed my eyes, safer in the cold and the dark where I could just ponder being dead.

“You’re alive,” Remus said, and I wondered how much of my thoughts I’d said aloud without knowing, “You are alive,” he repeated and I slumped against him, too busy sobbing all of a sudden to be embarrassed by it. His hand cradled the back of my head, fingertips moving against my scalp as if he were scratching Padfoot’s ears. He repeated again, perhaps to remind both of us, “You are alive.”

### Remus

One thing that all of us who had lived through the war had retained was the ability to sleep lightly, to be woken by any disturbance. Sirius had woken me before his nightmare had driven him to full-blown screams, just moans and the creaking of the bed beneath his thrashing. I legged it quickly to the extra bedroom, placing a Silencing Charm before I even looked at him. Teddy didn’t need to hear what his new friend’s cries sounded like.

And he didn’t need to see him like this either. It had been a long time since I’d seen that look in Sirius’ eyes, that frenetic blaze that had sustained him in Azkaban, propelled him on his quest for vengeance after. I’d soothed him through many a nightmare after he’d returned, a prisoner again in Grimmauld Place just as he had been as a child. As I held him against me now, sobs rattling his still too-thin frame, wasted beyond repair by twelve years in the dark, I realized in a strange way that this had been what was missing. It seemed cruel to think it, but the Sirius of the last couple days had been too collected, joking too coolly, trying too hard to convince me he was really him. But all that posturing, play-acting at a pale imitation of the devil-may-care Marauder I’d grown up with, it hadn’t rang true. It was out-dated, an out of print edition. The Sirius that had fallen behind the veil had been cagey and frustrated, damaged by Azkaban, tormented by nightmares and conviction without outlet. For the first time since I’d seen him on that stair at Grimmauld Place, I found myself actually beginning to believe he was back.

“You are alive, you are alive, you are alive…” The words had become a soft chant on my lips, whispered so softly against Sirius’ hair that I hoped they might just pass directly through his skull like a ghost through a wall, sinking directly into the troubled shadows of his mind.

“Moony,” he said softly, his breath warm on my chest through my thin pajama shirt. His tears had run dry, and I knew from experience that now he’d either ask me to leave or ask me to stay. My heart skipped when he said in that raw, small voice, “Please, stay.”

“Well, scoot over then, Pads,” I said, with a small nudge, hoping I sounded like I had no qualms about crawling into the bed.

He leaned back and cracked an eye open, only just noticing how awkwardly I’d been perched half-sitting and half-leaning against the edge of the mattress, “Blimey,” he grumbled, by way of apology and scooted over to make room for me. I only realized I’d been cold in the drafty room when I slipped under the covers into the pocket of Sirius’ warmth trapped there. The moon outside was bright, only a night out from full, and I could see him pretty well but his eyes were shadowed and hard to read. I resisted the urge to pull him back into my arms. He ran a hand down his face, “Bollocks…” he muttered, with feeling.

“Hear, hear,” I said, miming lifting a drink in toast.

I saw Sirius’ lips twist into a grim smile, shadowy in the moonlight in a way that was somehow at once menacing and inviting, “How the mighty Marauders have fallen… into bed together.”

I snorted a laugh out of courtesy, but there was altogether too much truth about fallen Marauders in the space between the words, in the space between us in the bed. A silence fell between us, neither tense nor companionable. Contemplative. It stretched on long enough that I thought he may have fallen back to sleep and I was wondering if I could sneak out of bed without disturbing him when he flopped onto his back and gave a decidedly awake sigh, “Sirius?” I asked his elegant profile, limned silver with moonlight.

“It’s just strange to be stark raving mad, innit?”

“It’s still preferable to the alternative, don’t you think?” I said.

“Being sane?” he scoffed, “Wouldn’t know, I doubt I ever was with my family legacy.”

“Dead,” I corrected, “With the things we’ve lived through, you’re basically mad or you die before you can become a raving lunatic.”

“I reckon you were always a sort of lunatic.” Sirius said, his voice to even to make it a joke, no cheeky smirk to punctuate it. It wasn’t a new joke anyway. After a long pause he admitted, “I s’pose I’m glad I’m not dead.”

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” I said, knowing he must have heard the crack in my voice, “Being the last of us… it was…”

“I can’t imagine,” he grumbled, turning his head to look at me without rolling back onto his side. His hand found mine under the covers and squeezed my fingers, “Thank Merlin you were still here. Dunno what I would’ve done if I’d staggered out of the veil and you weren’t…” he trailed off and I squeezed his fingers back.

“I still have nightmares, too, you know,” I said, redirecting the conversation slightly to distract myself from wanting to kiss the moonshadow of his mouth, “All the time.”

“You always did,” he mused, his thumb rubbing across my knuckles, “About the wolf, I guess. At school, before we even knew about your furry little problem.”

I felt myself smile despite myself, “Merlin, it’s been a long time since anyone’s called it that,” I closed my eyes, focusing on the way the pad of Sirius’ thumb felt against the back of my hand, the way his breath felt just hardly breezing against my face, “I’d nearly forgotten…”

Sirius mumbled something in agreement, but he was too far away for me to hear.

### Sirius

I awoke as Remus left the room, doing him the courtesy of pretending to be asleep. When the door clicked shut behind him, I gave into temptation and rolled into the spot on the mattress he had just vacated. I buried my face in the pillow and tried to swallow enough of his scent to sate the hunger in my chest. That musty-old-book-autumn smell hadn’t changed and I considered turning into Padfoot to let his superior nose sample it, but resisted.

It was tempting to feel embarrassed about my display of lunacy the night before, the nightmares, the confusion, the tears. But it was hardly the first time Remus had dragged me through a night like that one, and I sincerely doubted it would be the last. As I swung my legs out of the bed, a strange thought occurred to me. I felt somewhat more like myself than I had in a while, more at home in my own skin than I had since the veil had deigned to release back onto this mortal coil. I scoffed a small laugh to myself as I grabbed some of my clothes retrieved from Grimmauld Place and went in search of a shower; sick as it was, helping each other through full moons and nightmares was what passed as ‘normal’ between Moony and I.

Gladly, I found the washroom before I ran into any occupants of my cousin’s house, and shut the door behind me, grateful to put off any awkward pleasantries for a bit more of today. As I discarded my pajamas on the floor, my reflection in the mirror caught the corner of my eye and I started. I frowned, wondering if the strange man looking back ever cease to frighten and confuse me. I looked as though I had been ravaged by some long, merciless illness, all bones and pale skin and desperate wiry muscle. I touched the sharp line of one cheekbone, wondering at how damnably vain I’d once been, eager to catch my reflection in every window I passed and tossing my hair like a peacock. I ran my fingers through the hair, still dark and glossy however unkempt, one of the few beauties it seemed a life of pain hadn’t robbed me of.

It was a relief to stop looking at myself and step under the stream of the hot water, scrubbing vigorously every inch from scalp to sole. I wasn’t physically dirty enough to see dirt swirling down the drain but I wished in a way that I had been, to see some proof of bettering myself by way of soap and sponge. When I had nowhere else to scrub, I turned off the water and stepped out, drying myself with a wave of my wand. My eyes drifted back to my reflection and I was relieved to find a marginal improvement, at least in the warmth a thorough scrubbing had introduced back into the pallor of my skin. My hair shone only brighter for having been cleaned, but the shaggy chaos detracted from it, making me look more homeless than haute. I gave a few flicks of my wand, making ragged edges disappear until my mane once again gave the impression of being wild without looking like I’d actually been living outside.

I regarded myself with great consideration, surprised by how much better something so simple could make me look and feel. Once started, I found it hard to stop, evening and trimming my beard down to a symmetrical shadow of stubble and finding with relief that I looked more like myself already. I grabbed the clothes I had brought in with me, tugging on jeans that didn’t fit quite as much like a glove as they were meant to, topped with a black v-neck tee shirt that also hung off me a bit more limply that it once had. I rolled the sleeves up a little, contemplated the effect, and then decided it looked like I was trying to hard and righted them. I ran a hand through my hair and smiled at my reflection, and if it hadn’t been for the haunted eyes and the slightly feral tilt to the smile, I might not have known what had befallen that chap since his heartthrob days at Hogwarts. I tapped my discarded pajamas with the tip of my wand, transporting them back to the guest bedroom where Remus and I had slept. I tried to ignore the memory of him warm and inches away in the private darkness beneath the covers and traveled in the direction of the kitchen.

I was pouring hot water from the kettle over a teabag when I heard a soft gasp. Having been under the impression that I had the kitchen to myself, I looked in the direction of the noise. I didn’t see anyone at the table, where I thought the sound had come from, but just as I was about to write it off as a phantom of my indubitably damaged mind, there was another sound. This time it was the distinct _foosh_ of a page turning in a book and my eyes found the source. I tilted my head to the side to get a better look, a wave of powerful nostalgia threatening to sweep me away. Teddy was lying on his stomach beneath the kitchen table with his nose only inches from a book on the floor. So engrossed was he that it seemed his body was expending no energy on altering his appearance, and it might have been first-year Remus Lupin a few feet away from me. He’d been small for his age, probably a result of the toll lycanthropy took on the body, and at eleven he hadn’t been much bigger than Teddy was at eight. The same mop of nut-brown hair, the same shabby clothes, the same intensely focused reading face, lit so brightly with imagination and curiosity that it near sparkled.

When Teddy noticed he was being watched and looked away from the book, I felt deeply sorry to have disturbed him. I opened my mouth to apologize, but when his eyes met mine, I was struck by another realization. The day before I hadn’t noticed, maybe due to Teddy’s variable features or maybe due to my own distraction and nerves, but suddenly it struck me how much his face wore the stamp of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. It was something about the cast of the light on his face highlighting the cheekbones still hiding under baby fat, something about his serious, dark-lashed grey eyes. I reminded himself that his grandmother was my own cousin, her father my own mother’s brother. The resemblance only lasted a second before his Remus-like brown hair became a bashful shade of yellow, one eye flickering towards blue and the other towards brown, cheeks flushing, “I’m sorry!” he said earnestly, and any resemblance to his Black ancestors evaporated.

“Nonsense,” I said, grabbing my tea from the counter, “Don’t let me disturb you, you seem busy.” I nodded towards the books.

He flushed a brighter pink but his eyes decided on a brilliant blue, “I’ve been in Paris!” he said, with breathless excitement, as if it were a daring secret.

I couldn’t help smiling back, “I see,” I said, remembering Remus tearing through the works of Hugo and Sartre and Dumas, foggily remembering the ones he had thrown my way, “Books about France are particularly hard to put down.”

Teddy beamed at me and folded the corner of his page, a habit I knew his father must detest, and showed me the cover of his book, “Have you read it? You can read it when I finish.”

The book was tattered and faded and I had to take a step closer to make out the cover, and realized with a shock that it was the same copy of _The Three Musketeers_ that Remus had left on my bed one time in second year. I wondered if it was perhaps too mature for an eight-year-old, before remembering the many things I had done in school in total disregard for age restrictions. Besides, Teddy seemed like he might be shaping up to be a friend and I remembered _nothing_ having made me dislike adults more than them reminding me I was a child. I realized I was already nodding in reply to Teddy’s question and added, “I have read it. A long time ago, but those characters stick with you.”

He nodded with something like grave understanding, “Yeah,” he said, looking back at the book longingly, “I wish I could meet a real Musketeer.”

I gave a bit of a shocked laugh and said, “Your dad!”

Teddy gave me a quizzical look and said, unconvinced, “My… dad?”

“Oh, yes,” I nodded, “And me too!” His eyes scanned over me appraisingly and he seemed to consider the possibility of it.

“I figured you met at Hogwarts,” he said, still a skeptical slant to his words.

“Oh, well, we did,” I admitted and Teddy frowned, “But make no mistake, the man you call father was the Athos of our Musketeers.”

Teddy scoffed at the comparison but crawled half out from under the table, “That’s impossible, Athos is a brilliant swordsma--”

“And your dad is a brilliant wizard,” I pointed out.

“But his secret s--” Teddy’s eyes widened, “ _The wolf!_ ” he exclaimed, scrambling excitedly up to standing. I chuckled and nodded as he looked at me with a new shade of admiration, “Who were you?”

I thought for a second before laughing at myself and admitting, “I was something of a Porthos back then.”

One of Teddy’s eyebrows shot up and then he laughed, no doubt having trouble reconciling the man in front of me with the vain and self-important Porthos of Dumas’ creation. The laugh resolved into a rather shy smile and he asked, “So could I maybe be D’Artagnan?”

“Who else?” I said, clapping him on the shoulder, “I daresay our Athos is like a father to you.”

He grinned, sitting down at one of the kitchen chairs, resting his chin in his hands, his eyes glued to me, “Tell me more about the Musketeers. Was it just you two? Did you use swords? Did you fight the evil and corrupt? Did you fall in love?”

I knew the full and true answers to a lot of those questions were far more inappropriate than _The Three Musketeers_. Teddy would hear the full truth when he was a little older, but for now the fairy tale would do. I fetched my tea from the counter and sat across from him at the table and gave him my best stage-solemn look, “Well, for starters we didn’t call ourselves Musketeers, we called ourself Marauders. But if you ask me, that’s much better.”

I hadn’t felt so much like myself in years. We talked straight on into the evening, when Andromeda came in and started preparing dinner, occasionally adding her own two cents on anecdotes she’d heard or witnessed back in our youth. Remus came down presumably when the smell of onions and meat cooking were too tempting to be ignored, surprised when his son greeted him with a jubilant, “Moony!”

Andromeda bade him to sit and he took the seat beside Teddy, catching my eyes in a lightly scolding way, “I sense mischief.” he observed coolly, but I could hear laughter trying to reach the surface.

“Why did you never tell me you were a _Marauder_?!” Teddy asked, scandalized.

“I told you about my friends from school,” Remus insisted weakly but Teddy scoffed.

“Not the way Sirius did!” he countered.

Remus rolled his eyes, shooting a long-suffering but affectionate half-smile at me, “Well, we don’t all have his gifts.” There was an edge to his voice, but I couldn’t detect any actual anger or qualms he may have had about my revealing his mischievous past to his son. All through dinner, I tried to keep an eye out for any signs of displeasure from him, but apart from an indecision between whether he was avoiding my gaze or trying to stare into my soul, he seemed fine. I wasn’t entirely surprised when he crept into my room after everyone had gone to bed, climbing into the bed beside me in the dark, filling my room with the smell of autumn but not saying a word.

When I found his hand under the blankets and squeezed it, he squeezed mine harder back.

 


	5. Chapter 5

### Remus

The first thing I was aware of as I woke up in the night was the warm hard plane of Sirius’ back against my chest. The second thing I noticed was that, thankfully, even in my sleep I had kept a considerable distance between my pelvis and his arse. I was very grateful for that indeed, as the third thing I noticed was my erection, and the fourth, the uncomfortable reality that I also quite badly needed a visit to the loo. I maneuvered myself out of bed, wincing silently at the protests of my stiff muscles, trudging off to the bathroom as quietly as I could.

To my relief, the trip to the washroom, between my chronically aching body and the cold floor under my bare feet, had well and fully rid any sexual impulse from me at the moment. I emptied my bladder and washed my hands, careful to avoid the sight of my reflection in the mirror. I stretched, my spine giving a dry _pop_ in response, my chronically sore muscles straining.

Had there been a time before I’d been so damn fluent in the language of physical pain? Maybe a lifetime ago, before the bite that had put an early end to my childhood. My fingers went involuntarily to the old scar on my side, feeling the old bumps and puckers of the long-healed skin, the individual teeth that you could count if you cared to. Forty-eight. I’d counted, of course. Ten more than a man, half a dozen more than a normal wolf. I’d read everything I could get my hands on, of course, in my dad’s collection, then the Hogwarts library (restricted section included), before scouring the shelves of every book store in Diagon Alley and even eventually Knockturn Alley. Sometimes I’d stolen them, leaving a handful of change on a shelf, too paranoid and embarrassed to take them to the register. I’d scoured them all, but none of them said anywhere that werewolves have forty-eight teeth. It was insider knowledge, so to speak, just like the pain and the tides of the moon and the many indescribable smells of different kinds of magic. Sometimes I tried to view it as a kind of luck that I’d been bitten so young; those who became werewolves as adults had a better idea what they lost, and surely that was worse. Imagine all those years of being yourself every single night of every single month. Other times, like tonight, it was easier to feel passively sorry for myself and be done with it. I splashed my face with water just as a reason to take my hand away from that telling scar, before walking back into the hall where I promptly bumped into someone.

“Merlin!” Andromeda exclaimed in surprise, and she might have fallen if I hadn’t caught her arm to steady her, “Remus, you gave me a fright!”

“‘M sorry, ‘Dromeda,” I said, finding my mouth dry and clumsy with sleep, glancing across the hall at the guest room where Sirius was hopefully still sleeping soundly, untroubled by nightmares. He hadn’t had another nightmare. Not yet. I hadn’t the faintest doubt that there would be more. I’d pointed out to him the other day that I’d had nightmares even at Hogwarts just because of the wolf that paced hungrily in the back of my thoughts. But there’d been times back then, often when the pain kept me awake, that I’d caught the sound of him thrashing in his bed in our dorm. I’d wondered if it was about his mother at the time. He had more than enough things to haunt him now.

I tried to hear him and with relief heard only slow sleeping breaths inside. Tonight was the fourth night we’d spent in the same bed, chastely holding hands as we fell asleep, and whoever woke first (so far, me every day which was no surprise) making sure they got up before they had to face the other, sharing a pillow in the light of day. I realized I was still holding my mother-in-law’s arm and let go, noticing her eyes had followed mine to the guest room door, flicking back to me now with that startlingly perceptive glint I’d fallen in love with in her daughter’s eyes.

“That’s quite all right, Remus,” she said evenly, “You sound like you could use a glass of water.” I wanted to decline, despite my dry mouth, but it hadn’t been phrased as a question, so I followed her into the kitchen.

She filled two glasses, handing one to me and watching me drink from it before saying, “You must be very happy to have Sirius back.”

The water did prove to be a relief to my parched throat and palate, but I would have preferred it without conversation, to be honest, “Yes,” I said, diplomatically, “Of course, I am. He’s my oldest living friend.”

Andromeda nodded thoughtfully, taking a drink from her own glass before saying, “A friend, or more than a friend?”

I stiffened and started to defend myself, “Look, Androm--”

“Hush, I’m not scolding you,” she said draining her glass and putting it down, crossing her arms loosely, “I only want to know.”

“No,” I stammered, “Or, or yes. Just friends, yes.”

I could feel her penetrative stare without looking up from my water glass, “I’m just trying to understand _why_ you’re just friends.”

“Andr--”

“You clearly both want it to be more than that.” She plowed on.

“It isn’t--”

“I mean, passing every night together--

“It isn’t that simple,” I cut in tersely, by way of explanation, “It’s...complicated.” _Merlin, does that sound bloody juvenile..._

“Oh, so you tried it before,” she observed, somehow. That damn perceptive streak, “Hm,” she tapped her lip, “I’m sure I don’t understand.”

“You don’t.” I said, a little more roughly than I intended, not wanting to have to say out loud that it should be _obvious_ why I couldn’t. Too old, too broken, too many ghosts. And one of those ghosts, surely, was on her mind. So, obviously I _couldn’t,_ because her own daughter had died for me, and how was I supposed to forget that long enough to rekindle an old flame?

She shrugged, “I should be getting back to bed, I suppose,” she strode past me, mostly out of the room before turning back and saying, “Just think on it, Remus. Happiness has been in short supply for so many for so long, it might be a waste to throw some away.”

I stood in the kitchen for a few minutes alone, blinking at the place where she had been. She spoke to me tenderly now, almost as if I were her own flesh-and-blood son. It was hard to believe she’d disapproved of me so much once, years ago now. I couldn’t blame her then, who’d want their young, brilliant, gifted daughter tethering herself to an erratically employed middle-aged werewolf with a spotty past? But war and loss changed a lot of things, not least of all one’s definition of family. My eyes prickled and I blinked hard a couple times before dropping the glass in the sink with a soft clatter and shuffling back to my bed and my complicated bed-mate.

  
  


### Sirius

I wasn’t surprised when I woke to find the bed empty. I stared at the spot beside me, eyes lingering on the Remus-shaped dent in the mattress, willing him to be there. After a few useless seconds of that nonsense, I rolled on to my back, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes with a groan.

It was impossible to say whether things between he and I were improving or whether I was just accepting that they were stuck forever in a limbo of missed years and unsaid words. _You don’t want him,_ I tried to tell myself, _you don’t love him._ But I didn’t believe a word of it nor did I accept this bizarre status quo. I was so lucky to have died and been somehow (seemingly by random accident) given a second go at life. I was so lucky that I’d come back to a world where a few of the people I loved still drew breath. It seemed selfish to want more, but when in the hell had I ever claimed to be selfless anyway? That was Remus’ line of thinking, not mine, and I suspected that was the very problem.

He wanted me enough to pass the nights with me in loaded silence, pretending at being asleep while we stared at each other’s moonlit silhouettes until sleep finally won out. We held each other’s hands like shy third-years playing at courtship, as if we had no idea what people did together in beds. Not that it was about sex, it never was, but the question of it had certainly always hung about in the shadowy, uncertain spaces between us. Once in a while it would pounce out, just to make a mess of us for a laugh, like when James used to jump out from under his invisibility cloak to startle us out of dropping a stack of papers. And since I came back, oh, what places there were between us! Plenty of nice dark shadows in which for the question of sex to lurk. But, despite how eager Moony was to spend our nights together in this infuriating, enticing stalemate, he was ashamed enough to spurn me during the day, avoiding being alone with me at all costs. It was maddening. But then, when had Moony ever been anything but maddening? And when had it ever done me any good to lie in bed and mope about it like a girl? Better to just ask him, once and for all.

Thus emboldened, I shot out of bed. I dressed quickly, running a hand through my hair as I took the stairs three at a time, pulled towards Remus’ room like a magnet. Teddy had giggled and pointed the door out to me the day before last when I’d asked where his dad slept and worked and perfected his remarkable imitation of a hermit. I hadn’t been inside. It struck me as a little absurd, considering how at home he’d made himself in my bed that Remus hadn’t even invited me into his domain. The flaw of that thinking occurred to me immediately, of course, that this _house_ was his domain, his _son_ was his domain, the painful naked hours after the _full moon_ were his domain, even _the year two-thousand-buggering-six_ was his domain and he hadn’t scorned my entry into thosse parts of his world. I stamped the thought down as fast as it arose, not risking my nerve. Bloody nerve was the only advantage I’d ever had, after all. I didn’t allow myself to hesitate outside the door,  turning the knob and pushing it open with my shoulder in a triumphant rush.

Only to be met by the sound of Remus’ wooden desk chair clattering to the ground as he leapt to his feet, wand trained on me. His brows knit for a second of confusion before he lowered his wand saying, “ _Christ,_ Sirius, didn’t anyone teach you to _knock_?!”

“My lady mother was busy having me memorize all the Noble houses’ family trees,” I said, a bit breathlessly from my sprint across the house.

Remus looked at me expectantly and I could feel my adrenaline curdling in my chest, a fool-headed declaration of love sticking in my throat. What had I been thinking anyway, that barging in here, I’d somehow say my piece forcefully enough that Remus might have a complete change of character? He looked every bit the worn professor at the moment, right down to the elbow patches on his ragged jumper, complete with the stern explain-yourself-at-once-young-man expression on his lined, scarred, beautiful face. As if he would ever let himself be with me, as if my weight wouldn’t capsize the precarious raft that just kept him from drowning in a sea of guilt? The guilt came off him in waves, I’d realized, though he tried to hide it. He rolled his eyes and said, a bit impatiently, “Well, Sirius, what is it? You must have a reason for this rather urgent interruption.”

I scrambled around for an excuse, the Slytherin in me knowing that all I need do was mention a nightmare or the like and the soft, open Remus would appear, touching me kindly and making everything seem simple and neat. Much as I longed for that Remus, I didn’t want him as the product of a lie, the Gryffindor in me wouldn’t cheapen us to that. My eyes landed on Remus’ desk where I noted an open inkwell and pages of freshly inked parchment, a quill resting on the floor where he must have dropped it, “Just wondering what you’re up to, shut away in here all day.”

He knew it wasn’t what I’d come in here to say, I could feel it in the prickle of his gaze, but he didn’t comment, “All day? It’s hardly ten!” Remus waved his wand, his wooden chair righting itself, “As for what I’m up to, I’ve an article due with _Which Wizard_ by sundown that I’ve been shirking.”

I was tempted to ask what he’d been doing in here over the past couple days of hiding if he’d been shirking his work, but it seemed futile to ask a question when I knew he’d only give me an excuse. I took a couple steps towards the desk, leaning down to pick up the quill and offered it to him, “I’ll let you get back to it, then.” I said a little thickly, snatching my hand away a hair too fast when his finger brushed mine as he took the quill from me, turning on my heel and leaving before I had any more chance to make a fool of myself.

I let the momentum of embarrassment carry me as far as the door to the parlor before I realized I had been moving with every intention to floo James and complain to him. Of course it was Harry I meant to see, but I scolded myself for conflating them. They had similarities, of course, but it wasn’t fair or right to act as though they were one person. _Or sane,_ I reminded myself.

Shaking off my troubling thoughts, I snatched some floo powder from the mantle, tossing it into the fire and getting on my hands and knees to stick just my head in, clearly speaking the address I had made sure to memorize since my first visit. Colors swirled for a moment before a slightly distorted view of the Potters’ living room came into view, and I couldn’t help a small smile at the sight of Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione (children in tow) all sitting around the Potters’ living room, holding tea and coffee and toast. It was Ron that saw me first, that distinctive irrepressible Weasley grin bursting out on his face, “Oi, it’s Sirius. G’morning!”

“Morning, all,” I said as the other three heads swiveled to look at the fireplace, three more smiles joining Ron’s, “Mind if I come through?” I asked.

“You don’t have to ask, Sirius,” Ginny said, and I was glad it came from her, “You’re family.”

Before I could thank her, Hermione cut in, “It’s splendid timing, really. We were just talking about the matter of Remus’ birthday party.”

That piqued my interest and I climbed into the fire proper, brushing myself off as I walked into Harry’s living room, “It’s a surprise,” Ron informed me, a little unnecessarily.

“It’s not as though he’d let us,” Ginny said, as though explanation was needed.

“Oh, I’ve thrown more than my fair share of unauthorized Moony shindigs over the years,” I bragged, sitting on the floor and leaning against the foot of the sofa. It truth I was bloody grateful, this was something I knew how to do, something I could bloody well do in my sleep by the end of our time at Hogwarts. I took the proffered notebook in which Hermione had been scrawling some sort of list, “Let’s see what you’re missing.”

  
  


### Remus

I watched Sirius’ back as he fled, holding my quill limply where he’d placed it in my hand. That interaction had been a touch peculiar even for him. There was something he wasn’t saying. _A fair bit neither of us are saying_ , I acknowledged internally, dropping back into my wooden chair, still staring at the open door. But he’d barged in eyes blazing, head held high, looking more like the Padfoot that broken rules and hearts all over Hogwarts than I ever thought I’d see again. I realized my own heart was thudding a funny rhythm in my chest, and I reckoned it only made sense. My heart had been more tangled up with that Padfoot than anyone.

Tearing my eyes from the door, I glanced back at the parchment on my desk. It was nearly finished and it was a topic I was knowledgeable about and invested in, but the thought of putting quill back to paper was ludicrous. _That_ in itself was ludicrous, considering Sirius hadn’t actually said a sodding thing. But he’d wanted to. He’d been wanting to. All told, we’d hardly talked the last few days, I’d made sure of that. We had shared communal meals, but we were hardly going to hash out the finer points of our marvelously complicated relationship over shepherd’s pie with my eight-year-old son and the mother of my late wife. Who was also Sirius’ cousin. I smiled humorlessly to myself at the thought.

I kept thinking that he might try to talk about it in bed. I’d been dreading it, really, and hoping. Every night I told myself I would go to my own bloody bed, but I didn’t. I glanced over at its neatly tucked bedding, untouched for days. He hadn’t brought it up, though. Neither of us spoke once we were in bed, we hardly breathed loud enough to let the other hear. Or, well, I didn’t anyway. Much of a toll as lycanthropy was taking on my body, my sense of hearing remained as good as it had ever been and I would have heard Sirius’ breath across the house. I did, sometimes, find myself seeking out the unique rhythm of his breathing or his heartbeat, even as I hid from him in this room. I might avoid seeing him, but the proof that he lived and breathed remained an immense comfort.

It wasn’t fair, I knew. This halfway act we were in. Not even halfway, really, not third-way or quarter-way. There wasn’t a number to describe the nonsensical dance we were doing. He’d said he needed a while to figure out what we were doing, and I tried to tell myself I was giving him time, but I wasn’t. I’d already made up my mind, hadn’t I? I thought back on my unsolicited advice session in the dark kitchen with Andromeda, thought of all the ghosts between Sirius and I that I’d decided were an answer to the question we were both too awkward and battered and scared to actually ask.

I listened for his heartbeat and couldn’t find it. A surge of worry bloomed in me but I squashed it, telling myself he’d surely just gone for a stroll or to visit Harry or something. He’d looked like he needed to put as much distance between us as possible when he fled and I kicked myself for how much that had stung. I had no right, after all, to long for him when I sat here for hours every day convincing myself that I couldn’t be with. Not really, not the way we wanted, had wanted for so long. It had simply never been the right time, I told myself, as if that made it any easier. I envied James and Lily for the maddest second. It had taken most of our time at Hogwarts for James to win her over, of course, but once he had they had fallen together so simply, so easily, so naturally. Perfectly. I reminded myself they’d only enjoyed it for a few years, intentionally twisting the knife it stuck in my heart, for having dared to envy them, to even compare myself to them.

“ _If I died tomorrow, you still couldn’t stop me smiling”_ James had said, flopping into his four-post bed after his first date with Lily in our sixth year, his face gleaming in the glow of their first kiss. Sirius and I had exchanged a look, me rolling my eyes as he mimed being sick, smiling for our friend all the same. He’d been single-mindedly trying to win Lily’s affections for years, though, and we were at least half as surprised as he was. And he meant every word of it, one kiss from Lily, a few hours of her time, and it was enough to put his soul at ease. Meanwhile, Sirius and I traded jokes like we were any two friends, but were carefully to never touch, to never be alone, to never let a kiss occur outside our heads. Lily and James had got it right on their first date, and Sirius and I still hadn’t got it right thirty years later, the war, the world, our own messed up heads, even death getting in our way. I couldn’t truly envy Lily and James, couldn’t do anything more than mourn them every day, grieve every simple, easy, natural, perfect year together of which they were cheated.

With a frustrated groan, I twitched my wand at the door, shutting a bit more loudly than intended and turned back to my work with brittle determination. I managed to trudge through it, writing the last few paragraphs without the spark of the first couple pages, but it was going to have to be good enough. After an indeterminate amount of time staring at my article as though I were reading it order, I shrugged and neatly folded it, stuffing it into a slightly too-small envelope. I stood, stretched so that half my joints popped, and trudged up to the attic where the family owl, Ogden tended to roost.

Ogden was a common barn owl, with keen amber eyes that Tonks had told me reminded her of Firewhisky and earned him his name. I gave his head a pat while I attached the envelope to his foot, recalling how I’d knocked back my own glass of Old Ogden’s and told her through the burn in my throat that maybe _everything_ just reminded her of Firewhisky. She’d laughed with abandon, like I hadn’t heard anyone laugh in years and it had warmed me more than the drink. Laughs like that had been common once, but she was young (too bloody young for this work, I’d thought) and I wondered if she’d known a world where everyone laughed that freely or whether it was a kind of rebellion.

We’d just come off a win, a routine reconnaissance mission for the Order and had gleaned far more than we’d expecting. We’d sat on those crates right there, waiting for Ogden to return to send a (thoroughly encrypted) note to Albus and Tonks had reached down and grabbed a dusty bottle from behind the boxes. I’d quirked an eyebrow but she’d just winked and started pouring. I hadn’t known if we’d been passing time or celebrating, and it wasn’t until a couple days later that it occurred to me we may have been flirting. Sirius had been dead less than six months.

Not dead, just gone. Missing. Behind that veil that smelled of death and dark magic and made the wolf uneasy, not a day older wherever he was despite the months that would become years. I looked into Ogden’s amber eyes, brilliantly clever but aloof like all owls and wondered if he missed Tonks’ laughter half as much as I did.

### Sirius

  
  


When I had gotten back it had been late and I had half expected to find Moony in my bed. All the question marks hanging around aside, few sights beat that of ‘Moony in my bed’, but it was late and I’d assumed he’d gone to sleep in his own room and I doubt he wanted me to bother him at this hour. It had been a strange day of Marauder-esque planning with Harry and co. and only stranger still when I finished the night off with a stop at Grimmauld Place.

If being there with Moony had been strange, being there alone was far stranger. I tried to ignore the ghosts around every corner, the memory of lifetime-ago fights and laughs and punishments. I tried not to think about Regulus, small and handsome and not nearly brave enough to stand up for me. If he’d been that brave he’d have been placed in Gryffindor just as surely as I was and ours would have been very different stories. Harry had explained the part he’d played in undermining Voldemort to me, expecting me to be proud, expecting Regulus to be redeemed. In a way I was, in a way he was, but we’d both died and only I’d come back and what difference did it make now anyway? Reminding myself that I was supposed _not_ to be thinking about it, I took the stairs two at a time up to my old bedroom on the top floor, hesitating at the door.

My eyes lingers for a moment on the dust that had gathered in the copperplate engraved letters of my name on the door, surprised they hadn’t been blasted away in some fit of scorn from dearest mum. I hadn’t come up here after Azkaban, even when I was living ( _more like imprisoned_ ) under this familiar roof. Being imprisoned again was bad enough without crawling into my old cage to see if the bars still looked the same from the inside. But, in a true proof that Harry was by no means his father, his stash (if you could even dignify it with that name) of pranking supplies was pathetic, and though Ron promised a better stash back at his, courtesy of George, I didn’t see any sense in letting my stash moulder away in this mausoleum of a house. It was against the Marauder code to let perfectly good pranking supplies go to waste. I took a deep breath, steeling myself, and turned the wrought iron doorknob, the familiar feel of it under my fingers making me slightly queasy.

I blinked at the tidiness of the room for a moment before remembering that Remus had been using it around the moon. It was certainly tidier than I’d ever kept it. Upon closer inspection, however, it wasn’t entirely clean. The chandelier clearly hadn’t been used or lit in many years, likely not since I left the room full of that dumb teenage vitrio. It was densely cloaked in cobwebs, the half-candles in its sockets crying stalactites of hard wax. The big wood-framed bed was quite neat and clean, the wardrobe chipped but otherwise in good shape. The bookshelf was in decent order and I approached, half-smiling at the evidence of which books Remus had borrowed by the spots where the layer dust on the front of the shelves was the thinnest. With some smug teenage satisfaction, I noted the walls still bore the (now rather faded) Gryffindor banners and pennants, the nudie Muggle girls, the Vincents and Harleys and Triumphs, their chrome still as shiny as the day I bought them. I resolved to find out what had ever become of my old bike, and to replace her if she was gone, before my eyes fell on the old picture of the Marauders.

My breath caught in my throat and before I knew it my legs had carried me over to the far wall. Merlin, did we look _young_. And why not, we had been. The picture had been taken on our last Hogsmeade trip sixth year, I remembered. Marlene McKinnon had taken it, enamored as she’d been with her camera (a Muggle one that she’d painstakingly charmed herself) and pointing it excitedly at anything and anyone. The Marauders, naturally, were always quite happy to jump into the spotlight for the sake of their fans and friends, and when Marlene had asked for a picture on their way to Hogsmeade, they had thrown their arms around each other’s shoulders and grinned their match set of cheeky grins. Well, James and I looked cheeky anyway with that twin glint in our eyes as we exchanged a glance mid-laugh before meeting the camera’s lens. Moony was at James’ left, in his shabby second-hand robes, looking a smidge bashful at the attention but grinning just the same. I was struck by his handsomeness, and although it was black and white, his shy brown eyes peeking out from behind boyishly curling brown hair. I tried to look at Pettigrew, but I couldn’t help it.

It was my arm around him, my hand resting on his right shoulder with the lazy, careless, but unerring protectiveness of a fiercely Gryffindor friendship. He was a good head shorter than us and no bloody out of place, so much more than we’d reckoned at the time. Sure, there was the matter of attractiveness, his small watery eyes and doughy frame wildly mismatched beside my own carelessly elegant good looks (now quite lost to decades of grief and hard living). We’d known he wasn’t much of a looker back then though, it was the other ways that he was different that we hadn’t seen. Pete didn’t look at Marlene’s camera, he was too busy watching the other three Marauders, particularly James and I, with a sort of rapt fascination. Looking at it now, the plain envy and disbelief in it made me want to sick, made me want to reach into the picture and grab sixteen-year-old Pete by the front of his tee shirt and ask him _how_ and _why_ he could possibly do what he would. I’d tried to tell myself that he was simply weak-willed, a follower through and through, sucked from our orbit to Voldemort’s by the latter’s legendary gravity. But would I ever stop wondering if there was something we might’ve done? He had fallen by the wayside after Hogwarts, and maybe if we’d made more effort to keep him feeling included, feeling like a valuable member of the Marauders…

But thinking like that was a quick route to madness, I knew. His betrayal was many years ago, hell, even his _death_ was many years ago at this point. My fingers skimmed the surface of the photograph, the same fingers that rested on Peter’s shoulder with that sense of proud, friendly ownership. The boy in the picture had been my friend. Not as dear a brother as James, not as magnetic and maddening as Moony, but he had been my friend all the same. I hated him, but the memory was important. I knew the Permanent Sticking Charm on the photo was infallible (I’d cast it, after all), and I drew my wand from my pocket, guiding it carefully around the border of the photo, muttering precise _diffindo_ -s under my breath. It was slow going, but after a few minutes, a chunk of the grey silk wallpaper came free, falling into my other hand and revealing disintegrating paint and plaster below. I regarded the piece of silk, considering trimming away the faded scarlet and gold corner of a Gryffindor lion at the top or the gleaming handlebars of a Triumph Bonneville at the bottom right but for some reason couldn’t bring myself to do it. I slipped it into my back pocket, glanced once more at the hole in the wallpaper, and then turned to excavate the boxes of prank paraphernalia that I hoped were still hiding beneath the bed.

 


	6. Chapter 6

### Remus

Never in the forty-seven (Merlin’s balls, I was old…) years of my life had I asked for a birthday party, but I did have them thrust upon me. Or at least once I’d gone to Hogwarts, there had not been a year that the Marauders would dream of allowing March to go by without a celebration. After Voldemort’s defeat, the surviving Order members had done the same, albeit without some of the schoolboy recklessness and frivolity. So when Teddy called for me and I came downstairs, only to be greeted by a chorus of ‘surprise’ and ‘happy birthday’s, though I may have whinged my heart may not have really been in it. It was far better than the years between Voldemort’s first defeat and his second. It was worlds better to have a party I hadn’t asked for than to have no one who cared enough to throw one, and I wished I’d understood that better when I’d been at school.

At first, it seemed like a small, reasonable affair. The table was laden with food and drink, but not in excess. The guest list wasn’t terribly long; Harry and Ginny with little James, Ron and Hermione with Rose, a couple of other Weasleys, and of course, Andromeda and Teddy. And Sirius. After the initial well wishes were given and everyone broke up into smaller groups, snacking and mingling, Sirius gave me a worryingly innocent smile as he poured me a cup of tea. Trying not to think about how difficult sleeping without him the previous night had been, I accepted it and went to take a sip just as he was clapping my shoulder a bit stiffly and saying, “Many happy returns.”

I yelped and dropped the cup back into the saucer with a clatter when there was a sudden sharp pain on my nose, looking down just in time to see the cup’s teeth receding back into the harmless looking brim. I scowled at Sirius, rubbing my nose and said, “Really, Padfoot? A Nose-Biting Tea Cup? I didn’t think they even still _made_ these!” He was laughing, though, his grey eyes bright, and I realized that my own laughter had undercut my attempted indignant tone.

“They don’t,” Ron supplied, grinning as he bit into a biscuit, “Sirius had some great old stuff stashed in his old room.”

I shot Sirius a look but before I could ask if he’d truly ventured into his old Grimmauld Place room just for some silly joke items, Teddy was tugging my hand, “Happy birthday, dad,” he said, and I wondered if he’d sported that particular shade of violet with the knowledge that it was my favorite or whether it was intuition, or random, “Why don’t you take a load off?”

I opened my mouth to ask him if Sirius had taught him that turn of phrase, but was cut off mid-sentence when my rear end hit the floor. I couldn’t help chuckling when I glanced back to see that the chair I’d been aiming for had scooted back on its own, leaving me to fall to the ground. It had been a favorite trick of James’ and especially with the element of surprise, I couldn’t deny its effect. I chuckled along as Harry offered me an arm and pulled me to my feet, only to settle in the next chair over and be greeted by the unmistakable raspberry of a whoopie cushion. I wanted to give a sour look but it gave way to a hearty chortle as I watched Teddy, Harry, and Sirius exchange high fives amidst their cackling, feeling quite transported through time.

The party continued in much the same way, although I did acquire a less combative cup of tea and a less flatulent seat. The little pranks and jibes were not all directed at me, of course, and Teddy and I exchanged a wink when I caught his eye as he and Sirius were slipping an old-fashioned dungbomb right where Hermione was about to place her handbag, distracted by the conversation we were having about werewolf legislation. More sportsmanlike games of gobstones and charades came and went and I felt anything but a year older. Quite the opposite, I felt like a teenager again. I watched Sirius, Harry, and Teddy reconvene again and again, plotting out their next move and trying to restrain the anticipatory laughter. I was only just starting to feel left out when Sirius covertly caught my eye and curled one finger, beckoning me to join him in the kitchen. The mischievous smirk made his face look a good decade younger and made the blood hum in my veins, and honestly, I couldn’t have denied him even if I’d wanted to.

We were the only two in the kitchen and on the counter in front of Sirius stood a massive chocolate cake mounded generously with cream. I recognized it as Molly Weasley’s work, though she was not present, and reminded myself that effusive thanks were in order. A stack of plates waited for the serving of cake, along with a pile of candles, and in Sirius’ hand a fistful of forks, I guessed as many as there were guests. His smirk had spread into a grin as I’d come in and an errant memory flitted through my mind of how _good_ it felt to kiss him while he grinned like that, before I pushed the thought away, “What’s on your mind, Padfoot?” I asked, keeping my voice even.

“Well, Mr. Moony,” he said and I felt heat in my cheeks, remembering the many times he’d added the honorific of ‘Mr.’ only while making mischief together, “It’s your birthday and yet you haven’t been behind any of the fun. Whaddya say?”

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, surprised by the adolescent eagerness in my voice.

He glanced meaningfully at the forks in his hand, “You were always better at the charm than me,” he said, his gaze moved to the cake, “And it would be absolutely criminal for a fine cake like that to be sullied by cutlery.”

I immediately knew exactly what he meant, and felt the answering grin spreading on my lips and drew my wand from my pocket, tapping the forks with the tip and muttering the familiar incantation, unspoken for many years, “ _Furcadicula Languidus._ ” The forks did not appear changed but neither of us expected them to, having turned this spell on many an unsuspecting Hogwarts student back in the day.

Sirius put down the innocuous-looking forks on the topmost plate, just as the sound of a whoopie cushion sounded from the sitting room and Teddy’s clear laughter rang out. Sirius leaned back against the counter, careful to place himself a bit to the side of the remarkable cake, and his eyes met mine, gleaming, as he said with a nod towards the sitting room, “I daresay your boy’s got the Marauder bug.”

“Hmm, I wonder how he caught that,” I said, stroking my chin as if pondering.

“Just as likely he was born with it,” Sirius replied, giving my arm a companionable punch.

“And yet,” I said, with an involuntary step towards him, “It didn’t make itself known until _someone_ put ideas about Marauders and Musketeers in his head.”

A flash of uncertainty interrupted the smug, devilish smile that sat so comfortably on his features, “You’re upset about that,” he said, his lips quirking into a repentant frown. It didn’t belong there, on those lips, that should be laughing and smirking and kissing.

I shook my head, “No, not upset about it,” How did I wind up standing so close to him, mere inches apart. I met his eyes again, and realized I was standing close enough that our small height difference was more pronounced and he was looking up at me through those dark lashes, “I like it…” I said, and it took me a split second to remember what I was referring to, “I like you knowing him.”

“I like him,” Sirius said, and his returning smile drew my eyes back to his lips. He wet the perfectly bowed top lip with the tip of his tongue and rubbed them together for a second, the pressure making them pale before the color rushed back, deeper than before. It made my own lips feel dry and after a number of seconds passed, he said, his voice quieting the same way shadows fall, dark and mysterious, “I missed you, Remus.”

Loathe as I was to look away from his lips, my eyes were drawn back to his. He blinked slowly, but I saw the smoky fire burning as his gaze flitted between my left eye and my right. We were standing very close, “You didn’t know you were even gone.” I heard myself say, the earthy spicy smell of him and the richness of chocolate filling my nose. We were standing very close.

He shrugged with one shoulder but his eyes didn’t leave mine, “I always miss you, Moony,” he said quietly, and I could feel his breath on my cheeks we were standing so close.

“I missed you last night,” I said, without thinking, because he was just standing so very close and he smelled so very good, “I missed you when you were gone... both times,” his eyebrows lifted in doggish sympathy, “I used to miss you when you only left the room.”

“...and now?” he asked, just breathing the question, his face tilting up towards mine. We were standing so close, too close, and I was going to kiss him.

A loud bang sounded in the next room and I jumped back, knocking against the opposite counter. Ripping myself away from the magnet of Sirius’ lips. The air felt too cool against the front of my body after being washed in the fragrant heat of his body. He blinked at me, looking a little dazed, his lips still parted. I had to put more distance between us before I just went and kissed him anyway and I fled the kitchen as inconspicuously as I could, and tried to remind myself of Tonks. I’d never wished she hadn’t been a metamorphmagus until this moment when it was so hard to cling to a clear image of her in my mind. I could hear footsteps behind me on the stairs, wished he hadn’t followed me, knew he’d only get lost if I was cruel. I didn’t want to be, cruelty was the last thing on the list of things that I wanted to give him, but I spun around at the top of the stairs, “Siri--” I started, but stopped, finding myself face-to-face with Hermione.

She shook her head, a crease between her brows, “Not Sirius,” she said, with a shrug, “Just curious,” she frowned and quickly amended, “No pun intended.”

I didn’t laugh, just leaned against the wall and buried my hands in my hair, “It’s a long story. Complicated.”

“Hm,” Hermione crossed her arms and leaned against the wall beside me, “Tends to be with you.”

My eyes shot to her face, that having not been the comment I’d expected, “What?” I said.

“Well, you tried to talk yourself out of things with Tonks every chance you got,” she said, as if that explained anything and I winced at the memory of how true it was, “You could probably fill a novel with all reasons you shouldn’t have a piece of that cake in there.”

I opened my mouth to explain that I had _every_ intention of eating that cake, but shook it off, “No, Herm-- You don’t understand. I… _Tonks_ ,” I said, impatient with my own inarticulateness, “Tonks is all the reasons I shouldn’t.”

“Tonks would want you to have cake,” she said, with a somewhat sly smile.

“Not the cake!” I groaned, and explained pathetically, “Sirius.”

“Maybe Sirius _is_ the cake.” Hermione said airily.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She pushed off from the wall and put her hands on her hips, and I forgot she wasn’t the one twenty-odd years _my_ senior, “If Tonks would want you to still enjoy cake --which I firmly believe she would-- even if she wasn’t here, what makes you think she wouldn’t want you to enjoy Sirius?”

The words hit me like a truck, and I sputtered, “Hermione! Sirius, it’s not--”

“Oh, shut it,” she silenced me with a hand before placing it back on her hip, “I saw that little dance in the kitchen. And I had always had a feeling…”

I gaped at her for a second. Had she really suspected Sirius and I, back when she was only fifteen? Admittedly, she was the brightest witch I knew, but still. Maybe Tonks hadn’t been the only one who’d picked up on our undefined more-than-friendship. The thought of Tonks grounded me again. It didn’t _matter._ None of it made a difference, “But she _died_ for me.” I explained. Surely she’d understand that.

“She died for what she believed in,” Hermione said firmly, and I saw tears shining in her eyes, knew how fond she and Tonks had been of each other, “You and Teddy were part of that, but it was also love and equality and justice and…” she interrupted herself, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts, “Even if she _had_ died for you, she’d have done it so you could live _happily._ ”

Everything I’d been telling myself for the last week slid somewhat off kilter, “Hermione,” I said, my own voice thick, and she tutted and pulled me into a hug.

“I miss her, too,” she said, muffled against my hair.

I held her at arm’s length and opened my mouth to say something but was interrupted as Sirius’ somewhat strained voice called from downstairs, “Oi, birthday boy, come get some cake!” Hermione raised her eyebrows at the unintentional innuendo and I realized I was smiling. I shrugged and half-dragged her down the stairs, her words circling in my head as all those off kilter thoughts clicked suddenly, inevitably, into place and made more sense than anything had in years.

### Sirius

When Remus appeared back in the dining room, I hadn’t expected him to be grinning or dragging Hermione Granger in tow. I wanted to ask, but at the same time thankful for the room full of people preventing that conversation. It stung, there was no sodding way around that, to see someone smiling right after snubbing you. Not just someone, _Moony._ And he wasn’t just smiling, he was grinning like a damn fool, having trouble holding a straight face. I felt like a moron, practically tasting his lips on mine when he hadn’t even bloody kissed me.

I went through the motions as we sang and avoided his eyes till he was done blowing out the candles (or rather, trying to, as they were brilliant Extinguish-Proof Candles that George Weasley supplied). _That’s it,_ I told myself sternly, _that’s your answer and in case you didn’t know, it was a ‘no’. Suck it up. Move on._ Someone was cutting the cake and distributing slices but as I looked down at the generous serving of perfect chocolate cake in front of me, I didn’t know if I could bring myself to choke it down. My mouth tasted dry as ash and all I wanted to taste was Moony.

As the people around me made to dig into their cake, it took a moment for me to remember why they were complaining and laughing and I forced myself out of my thoughts. I looked away from my cake, and felt an involuntary laugh lurking in my throat as I watched every try to use the forks, which scooped up the cake just fine but dangled as floppy as spaghetti the instant before anyone could get a taste. I glanced at Remus (against my better judgment) just as he set the trend, scooping up a bit of cake with his fingers and eating it, the useless fork set aside. Others started to follow his lead but I didn’t see, transfixed by the sight of his tongue sliding along his finger.

I couldn’t say how long I stared before my thoughts were interrupted by the soft _splat_ of something hitting my neck. I wiped the spot with my hand, looking at it to find frosting and crumbs, unable to keep from laughing at the sight of the gleeful smile on Teddy’s face, hands covered in chocolate. Most people had already nearly finished their cake and it wasn’t long before an honest to goodness food fight overtook the table and I couldn’t help laughing despite the hollow feeling behind my sternum.

After a few minutes of childish abandon, the mature side of the primarily adult party took over and bashful _scourgify_ -s were pointed in every corner of the room. Harry and Ginny gathered up dishes and carried them into the kitchen, both still giving the occasional giggle and nudging each other as they started cleaning them. Teddy gave Remus a tight hug before being led off to wash up and bed by Andromeda.

I knew I should get up and help, but I couldn’t. I just sat there with my untouched slice of cake, watching the gathering dwindle. I watched as Ron asked Hermione if she was ready, holding their sleeping daughter, and she nodded, kissing the top of Remus’ head and saying something softly to him about cake before joining her family in the parlor and floo-ing home. Suddenly it seemed too quiet and I kicked myself, realizing Ron and Hermione had been the last to leave and now Remus and I were alone, _again._ I knew I should have been paying better attention.

Mechanically, I forced my body to stand, adding my cake to the considerable leftovers in the kitchen and washing my plate, pretending not to feel Moony’s eyes on me. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway. I wished desperately that he wasn’t sitting at the chair nearest the hall, I didn’t relish how close to him I was going to have to walk just to run away and lick my wounds in peace.

I came out of the kitchen and wished he would stop staring at me like that. Somehow I managed to still keep my eyes averted, knowing if I didn’t I would crumble, scream and cry and throw punches and Merlin knows what else. But even without looking I could tell, I could feel it, feel the pride and affection and attention, as if he were gazing at me in the the afterglow and not the… whatever the hell name there existed for this bleak answer to the question that had been floating between us all week. Really since we were about fifteen.

The sooner I got out of here the better. I could feel the frustration buzzing beneath my skin and, head down, I walked briskly past Remus, muttering, “Right, well, I’m to bed.”

It was easy to forget sometimes that being a werewolf gave Remus some physical advantages, reflexes among them. His chair hit the floor was a clatter as his hand closed around my wrist, his touch hot on my skin, “Sirius--” he started, his voice low in that soft place that it pained me to refuse.

“Moony, don’t,” I said, “I don’t want to talk about it, please, let’s just go to bed.”

“One thing first,” he breathed and before I could snap at him again, his other hand had grabbed the back of my neck and my back was hitting the wall and his lips crashed against mine in a searing kiss. My eyes shot finally to his face, finding his eyes heavy-lidded but open, his brow knit with feeling. I couldn’t stare though, my eyes falling shut as I tasted the chocolate in his mouth, my free hand remembering itself and finding his waist, pulling him closer. He growled softly in his throat and my heart rattled against my ribs, my tongue and teeth and lips, my hands, my hips, all of me trying to claw closer to him.

Intense and long-awaited as it was, teasing to maybe help me shake off the damn emptiness I’d carried for so many years, it wasn’t a terribly long kiss. Remus pulled back and I gulped at the air, feeling his ragged breath on my face. I half-expected an ardent glower, but when I lifted my eyes to his face he was smiling, though his eyes were fiery, “There,” he said, his voice rough, “ _Now_ we can go to bed.”

### Remus

Sirius’ fingers dug into my wrist, ready to drag me into the room where he’d been sleeping, but I shook my head and dropped a kiss on his temple, leading him up the stairs to my room. What in Merlin’s name had I been _thinking_ making him sleep in a guest room as if he wasn’t family, as if he wasn’t my pack, my mate? Would the wonders of my stupidity never cease?

Only when the door shut behind us did I look back at Sirius’ face and I wanted to scream at myself. He looked so shocked, so reticent, and this shouldn’t have been a revelation, me wanting him in my bed. But it was. I tapped the door with my wand, casting a silencing charm, and then reached for him. He made to kiss me and, damn, much as I wanted his lips I didn’t kiss him, folding him instead into a tight embrace, tucking his head under my chin. He tensed for a second before melting against me, squeezing me tight. After Azkaban he had always looked a but frailer but it was misleading and he gripped me as tight as he ever had. I pressed my lips to the top of his head, breathing in that wonderful smell. His scent was like taking a drink from a bottle of good liquor in a pine forest on the new moon, when I was all human and my body and mind were my own and any urge to run or fuck or howl was all my own.

“Quit huffing my scent, you mangy wolf,” he muttered against my chest, shocking a laugh out of me, a laugh round and honest. I felt him smile against me before he tilted his head, looking up at me with tentative eyes.

“Sorry,” I said, shrugging, “You smell good,” I wet my lips, tasting him on them, “The same.”

“You smell the same, too,” he said, smiling crookedly at how badly canine sentiments translated into human words.

I watched his eyes for a long moment, watching the silvery glint beneath the shadow of his lashes, tracking the lust and memory and uncertainty there. Too much uncertainty, “I’m sorry,” I said softly, kissing the corner of his mouth and feeling it twitch, unsure whether to smile or frown, “I’ve been a prat.”

“I made it easy,” he said, his lips brushing mine briefly.

“No, Sir--”

“Not my bloody fault, of course,” he interrupted, with a small roll of his eyes, “But I _did_ go and die on you and--” an involuntary whine escaped by throat and he stopped, looking sheepish at saying it so lightly, “Oh, c’mon, you,” he said and led me over to my bed, sitting us down on the edge and looking down at our entwined hands, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that was like. I shouldn’t joke about it.”

“You joke about everything,” I reminded him and he didn’t deny it. I looked down at our hands, too, struck again by how strange it was when I’d been so sure for so long that I’d never touch him again, “It was like…” I hesitated. I couldn’t compare it to James and Lily, nor to Tonks, it wouldn’t be right. I just said, “That’s why seeing you again… I grieved you,” I admitted, “But I never moved on.”

He let go of my hands, wrapping his arms around my neck and kissing me again, gentler than before. I had no choice but to kiss him back, his all those years of grief into him. My hands pulled him to me and we fell back onto the bed on our sides, kissing softly but hungrily, and he tasted like oxygen, like sustenance, like relief. Like salt. I realized one of us must be crying, maybe both of us. Sirius’ hands had been traveling along my chest, my shoulders, my waist, and when he pushed back slightly, I broke the kiss. His eyes were shining and I knew some of the tears were his, “Moony,” he said, brushing the hair from my forehead with unbearable care, “I… Is it going to be like… before?” he looked to the side and I wanted to kiss the tears from his eyelashes, “Sneaking around and… hiding.”

“No,” I said at once, leaning in and kissing along the trail of tears on his cheek, “We’ve lost enough time already.”

I could feel his smile, heard the way his head sped up, but his voice was wry as he said, “The sneaking _was_ pretty sexy, though.”

“Don’t worry,” I breathed against his ear, relishing the familiar shiver as I kissed along his jaw towards his neck, drawing confidence from my desire for him, “This can be sexy, too.”

And like that, the quiet patience was broken, replaced by eagerness roaring in my ears. A strangled moan slid out of him as I tasted chocolate on his neck. I rolled on top of him and he submitted to me as fluidly as he had on so many full moons, lying on his back and offering me his neck, his belly, his vulnerable racing heart. I growled in approval, feeling his answering tremble, our hands fumbling between us to get rid of the clothes, which suddenly seemed to be putting far too much of a barrier between us.

### Sirius

Merlin, Moony felt and tasted even better than I remembered. Every nerve in my body was awake and quivering and all he was doing was kissing my bloody neck. No, because Remus didn’t _just_ do anything, and as his teeth worried against my neck, finding just that spot where it curved towards my shoulder, he wasn’t biting. His teeth were re-inventing, disassembling and reassembling me, his hot breath against me threatening to scatter the pieces. He was reminding my body how to sing, just as the wolf had once taught me to howl at the moon when I was new to being a dog. Just like that, it was inevitable, unavoidable, brooking no argument.

In the very beginning, years ago, I’d thought maybe it was the wolf, the mysterious old magic in him that made him a force of nature. I knew better now. I’d learned over the years that no, it was just him. Just Remus. My Moony.

After fighting my way past what seemed like a million buttons down the front of his shirt, finally my hands found his skin. He hissed against my shoulder as my fingertips traced the familiar patchwork of scars, soft and raised and mystifying. They’d always seemed to me like some kind of ancient magic unto themselves, and I’d wondered if maybe I’d have been able to read that old, beautiful, savage poetry if I’d studied Ancient Runes at school instead of Muggle Studies. There were some new ones, I found and I sat up so I could kiss them, but as Moony’s weight shifted to sit astride my lap, suddenly I could feel the aching hardness of his erection against my own and couldn’t stifle an, “ _Oh fuckkk._ ”

Moony took the chance to reach down and grab the bottom of my shirt, pulling it soundly off over my head and tossing it to the floor, his hands landing on my shoulders and gliding down my chest to my waist. Merlin, I’d forgotten how soft his hands were, soft as a girl’s hands in just another inexplicable mystery. Despite the primal wolf that stalked inside him and made an appearance every month, my Moony was a scholar, with the soft hands to go with that dumb, brilliant mind and _damn,_ how could that all be so sexy just because it was so _him._

My hands were still wrapped around his ribs and I pressed my face to the softly marred skin of his chest. I breathed in that wonderful wild autumn smell of his for a moment before getting down to the business of introducing myself to each of his new scars.

### Remus

I threw my head back and groaned at the feeling of Padfoot’s lips on me, the tip of his tongue just tracing my skin ever so lightly. His fingers dug into me a little harder, even as his mouth remained maddeningly gentle. My hands were on his waist and they found the knobs of his hips, my palms pressing him down into the bed as my hips gave an experimental thrust against him. He cried out directly against my chest, his breath damp, and tried in vain to press up against despite my hands holding him firmly in place. I grinded against him again, our erections straining against each other through our trousers, and I swore I could feel his pulse even through our clothes. Sirius whined desperately, trying to rut against me and I bit down on his shoulder, listening to his whine become a moan.

He lifted his face from my chest, cheeks flushed and pupils blown wide and dark with desire. He opened his mouth to beg, but I kissed him before he could make a sound, swallowing the begging moan he released onto my tongue. Sirius kissed me sloppily, beyond hunger, moaning into me every time I grinded against him. I only released his mouth and his hips when the friction and the body heat and the tightness grew too unbearable. He cried out when I swung off of him, bereft of the contact, “Moony, please…” he pleaded, soothing his kiss-bruised lips with a sweep of his tongue that made me twitch in the pants I suddenly couldn’t get out of fast enough.

“Take those off,” I managed hoarsely but instead of going to his own, his fingers flew to my pants, the contact even through clothes making my head spin. He got the button undone on the third try, eagerly tearing down the zipper and pushing me back on the bed, dragging my trousers and underwear down to my knees, “Sirius…” I started as he leaned down to my straining cock, but he silenced me with a fiery glance and I could only cry out wordlessly as he took me in his mouth.

He’d always been good at this, even when he was seventeen with no buggering clue what he was doing. I’d told him breathlessly, shyly, after the first time that he was a natural. Honestly, it was his eyes looking up at me, more black than grey, as much as his mouth that made him so good at it. My hips lifted off the bed, involuntarily, pushing myself into the soft skilled wetness of him, my eyes glued to his. The very corner of his lips curled in an estimation of a smile, even with me in his mouth and I had no idea how a thing like that could be so unbelievably sexy.

The bed gave a small creak and I realized with a throb in my core that his hips were moving against the bed. I groaned a the the sight of his ass, somehow still clothed in those damn black jeans that didn’t hug him quite the way they used to but still had quite the effect on me. Even with the jeans on, I could see the way his ass clenched and relaxed and I heard the snarl rise out of my chest rather than consciously made it.

He released my cock with a small wet _pop_ , either knowing me well enough or canine enough to recognize the urgency of the sound, “Moony--?” he said, those damn lips wet and magnetic.

“Need you,” I managed to growl and I saw the shudder go through him, his teeth snagging on his lower lip. A second later he was sitting up shakily, undoing his jeans while I peeled my trousers and socks off, until we were kneeling in the bed facing each other, naked as the day we were born. We stared at each other for a second, chests rising and falling raggedly, before I grabbed him by the hips and threw him down on the bed under me, looking up at me with eyes dark with lust but trusting me brightly, that wicked mouth curved in a reverent smile

### Sirius

My breath came heavy and needy as Moony loomed over me, strong and scarred and resplendent. He was brilliant. He was beautiful, only the soft light of the waning moon illuminating him, making the tips of his hair and eyelashes silver, making his skin glow like pearl. And suddenly he was kissing me again, his mouth rough and raw and starving against me, one hand fisting in my hair and making just the perfect splash of pain arc across my scalp. My hips strained up towards him of their own volition, the air in the room feeling cool after the stifling heat of my jeans. I cried out into him as his hand closed around my length unexpectedly, my soft scholarly wonderful hand at once soothing my need with its softness and making me hungrier with the tightness of its grip.

“Please, Moony, please,” I sighed, never fully breaking our kiss, “I need you, too.”

He shuddered slightly, his hand squeezing me just shy of too tight before releasing me. He let go of my hair, reaching down to wrap my legs around his waist. He blindly fumbled for his wand, unable it seemed to tear his eyes from mine. They were blazing, their earthy brown so vivid it reminded me of the amber color they adopted around the full moon. His fingers closed around his wand and he muttered something, giving it an impatient flick and I gasped at the always a bit strange sensation of the lubricating spell we’d figured out by trial and error all those years ago in the Gryffindor dorm. He smiled at my gasp and dropped his wand, his hand going to me at once, wasting no time slipping a finger inside of me.

I groaned, deep and animalistic, feeling the slight burn and stretch and him and wanting _more._ He snickered softly at the reaction, curling the finger and making me arch off the bed as his fingertip just brushed the spot. He worked another finger into me and I realized my eyes were squeezed shut, writhing on the sinful delight of his touch. He moved his fingers inside me for a moment but I could feel his impatience and I shared in it, “Please,” I managed to open my eyes, saw his smile as my eyes reappeared, “Need you _now._ ”

He needed no further urging, removing his fingers from me and using them to guide his cock to me and I moaned when I felt the head nudge against me, “Padfoot,” he said softly, soothingly, adoringly, as he watched my face and guided himself into me. I shuddered beneath him, and he forced himself to still though I could feel his thighs trembling, hip bones pressing against my ass. I reached for him and he leaned closer, wrapping our arms around each other as he started to move, slow and gentle at first, watching my reaction before leaning his forehead against mine and letting instinct take over.

I moaned and sighed and thrashed, my nails raking down his back meeting his every thrust with my own cock thrumming, pressed between our bodies. We offered ourselves up as tribute, as sacrifice, laying ourselves at the feet of the often cruel and inexplicable force that had drawn us together and torn us from each other again and again. It was a plea, a desperate heady prayer for mercy. Moony gnawed and sucked at my neck, my shoulder, my mouth and we moaned into each other, a broken howling harmony.

I knew he was getting close from the nature of his thrusts, the guttural quality of his deepening moans, “Moo-ny,” I gasped, aching for him to touch me. It was all the urging he needed, adjusting to allow for one of his hands to slip into the sweat-sticky heat between us and wrap around me, “Ye-es!” I cried out brokenly, my climax crashing down on me, blindingly, after only a couple tugs of his hand and his teeth clamped down on my shoulder as he growled, spilling himself inside me.

  
  


### Remus

It was mesmerizing, staggering, mind-numbing. It was too much pleasure, too much relief. At least a decade of pain and doubt and loss seemed to pour out of me with my seed, at once euphoric and excruciatingly intense. I was frozen, my muscles, my every fiber trembling with sensation as though the lightest wind to blow me to bits. I could feel Sirius softening in my hand, knew I should let go, distantly heard him say something but I didn’t dare respond.

There was a moment of terror as I felt him shifting my body, I wanted to cry out _no_ , he couldn’t. If I blew to pieces I’d be gone and we’d be apart again when we only just finally got this back!

But I didn’t blow to pieces, I just slipped out of him, my mouth slipping limply off his shoulder. My eyes lingered intently on the red imprint there wondering absently if it would scar over to match mine, _werewolves have forty-eight teeth._ A blind panic rose in me at the realization that _I’d bitten him_ and suddenly I needed his eyes, I need to apologize, I needed to be put down.

“Remus? Remus?” I realized he was saying as I looked up, finding his eyes worried, “Christ, Moony, are you okay?”

“I…” I managed before my voice broke and then he was scooping me into his arms and holding me tight.

“It’s okay,” he said soothingly, his fingers trailing up and down the sweat-cold of my back, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I managed, my face pressed to his neck, the pieces gradually falling back into a picture that made some sense in my head. _You can’t infect him like this,_ I remembered, _and you didn’t even break the skin._ But as reason was returning to my mind, embarrassment was rising in my gut and I buried my face harder against him, “Guhh.”

He must have recognized the change in my tone because he pulled back, his hands still on my shoulders, “What happened there, Moonbeam?”

The embarrassment evaporated, something like bliss replacing it at the sound of an endearment I hadn’t heard in a lifetime, only spoken a handful of times ever. I saw his face relax as I grinned, “Oh, you know,” I said dismissively, “Just that pesky insanity thing.”

Sirius smiled at the joke but his face softened, his grey eyes searching mine, “It’s okay, ya know,” he said, his hand combing my hair from my sweaty brow, “This all… is a lot.”

I smiled back at him, and it was bittersweet, happy as I was with the relief of this all returning to me, “I missed you so much.” I said, by way of answer, hearing the rawness in my own voice, both from emotion and hoarse from use.

He kissed me, softly, sweetly, and it wasn’t lust and anger and grief this time, but comfort and agreement and home. I curled against him and we wrapped around each other.

  
  


### Sirius

We lay without talking for a long time, I couldn’t say how long. His head rested on my shoulder, his breath skating across my chest, cool against the sweat on my skin. I didn’t care about being sweaty, or a little cold, or a little hungry, or whether we fell asleep, or whether we ever climbed out of this bed again. This had been the strangest week of my life and I’d had some exceedingly strange weeks over the years. For the first time since I’d climbed out of the mysterious clutches of the veil, some of the ghosts and memories seemed to recede a little, like shadows chased into the corners by a bright light. They weren’t gone, I knew, but they receded and Moony remained. I kissed the top of his head and my arms tightened around him, not even knowing whether he was awake.

His stomach grumbled in reply to being squeezed against me and I laughed in surprise. I didn’t see the laugh coming until I heard it, and then he was laughing too and it felt good. Hell, it felt almost kind of like some semblance of normal. When the quakes of our laughter stilled enough, I asked, “That still makes you hungry, then, eh?”

Moony elbowed me half-heartedly in the ribs and looked up at me, “Pardon me, but that’s perfectly normal.” There was something about hearing that stern professor tone again that set me into another laughing jag, maybe because it was so much more out of place coming from this naked, drowsy, honey-eyed Moony than from his usual composed self. He was trying to give me a stern look for laughing but he couldn’t seem to pull it off with that somewhat giddy smile creeping onto his lips.

“There’s still loads of cake,” I managed, “Molly made enough for an army and we were all too busy playing with it to eat it.”

Remus gave me a funny look, a nod, and kissed me.

“Is that your way of saying you want the cake?” I asked, a little dubious but grinning nonetheless.

“Oh, yes,” he said, kissing me again and chuckling to himself at some private joke, “I want _all_ of the cake. Forever.”

“Well, you know I cannot refuse you,” I teased. I rolled my eyes affectionately when he didn’t explain, not bothering to ask. We still had loads of catching up to do, and I found I wasn’t in a rush. I leaned over to grab my jeans off the floor, and grinned to myself, hoping he’d try to use one of the charmed forks before he remembered to fix them.

 


End file.
